When Jack was a boy in Bovisand Bay
And the sea turned to gold at the end of the day
The lights of the harbour ship sailing away
Brought his mind to the dreams of those lands, far away

Over meadow and moor to manhood he came
But the wind in the salt spray still called out his name
And he knew that his wild heart would never be tame
Till he'd travelled the world
For his fortune and fame

One morning near Christmas, when a stormy wind blew
He left his dear sweetheart and his young family too
And signed on in Plymouth for a jacket of blue
and a life as a sailor with the Cattewater crew

They butted past Scilly, in wild ocean swell
And crossed the atlantic in a gale out of hell
Then passing Newfoundland the ship's warning bell
Struck everyman's heart with sound of it's knell

 

 

Before they could alter their course to the right
The ship struck a rock with all of it's might
And tons of white water poured in from the night
And covered each sailor with it's green, ghostly light

They went to the bottom each man of the crew
But their ghosts drifted homewards to the harbours they know
and in Bovy near Plymouth when the sunset is due
Old jack haunts the rocks where the wet sea runs through