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Attention all ye seamen brave that sail the ocean far,
And hear of the clipper schooner belong to George N. Barry.¹
With her sails all set and she cast her lines and slowly left the pier,
In charge with Captain Taylor, who belonged to Carbonear.
The McClure she left the thirteenth of March for Naples she was bound;
She's a clipper of the sailing fleet with timbers strong and sound.
She carried a load of fish in bulk, rough weather for to meet,
Until she reached Gibraltar she was the beauty of the fleet.
A sharp look out for submarines, a watch by every eye,
When Allen Barrett at her wheel a submarine did spy;
He told the captain and the mate if what he saw proved true,
The captain he gave orders to heave the schooner to.
We lowered our canvas right away, we lowered our boats that day,
We knew that our schooner would be sunk and soon would row away;
The lieutenant and three of her sailors have rowed on board of our craft,
He placed one bomb in her fo'castle and another he put aft.
They ordered us to leave the ship, so we done right away,
Left to the mercy of the waves to row that livelong day;
And what provisions we had on board and oilskins from our crew,
Our captain's sheet and sections and coastal pilot, too.
We rowed the deep that livelong day 'til very late that night,
When a good Italian destroyer that quickly hove in sight;
'Twas by their captain's orders when us he did discern,
He ordered all our crew on board and slacked our boat astern.
They asked us our nationality as you may understand —
But we were British subjects belongs to Newfoundland.
They landed us in Cadiz where we were cared for well,
'Til we arrived at St. John's town the sad tale there to tell.
Six men composed our schooner's crew, their names I did pen down:
There's Allen Barrett and Bert Noseworthy belongs to St. John's town;
There's Charlie Steven and William Bailey and Bert Wills was our mate,
Those hardy sons from Newfoundland belongs to Twillingate.
Collected in 1977 from Pius Power, Sr. of Southeast Bight, NL, by Genevieve Lehr and Anita Best and published as #76 in Come And I Will Sing You: A Newfoundland Songbook, pp.133-134, edited by Genevieve Lehr (University of Toronto Press © 1985/2003).
Genevieve Lehr explained footnote ¹ by commenting that Barry is very often pronounced Bar in Newfoundland, as it is in this song, rhyming with 'far'. Lehr also noted that the McClure was built at Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, and was owned by J.T. Moulton of Burgeo, NL, for the salt-fish trade. While sailing to a Mediterranean port with a cargo of six thousand quintals of fish, the McClure was sunk by a German submarine off the Spanish coast on May 22, 1917. Captain Augustus Taylor and his crew landed safely in their lifeboat at a port near Gibraltar. Lehr went on to say that there is some discrepancy as to the actual method the Germans used to sink the boat. The song, apparently composed by a member of the crew and therefore a first-hand account, has it that she was blown up by a bomb placed aft and another placed in her foc'sle. However, Lehr concluded, two published accounts state that she was either torpedoed or sunk by gun-fire.
Per the Northern Shipwrecks Database the McClure, out of St John's, NL, was captured and bombed by a German submarine off Cape Carbonara, Sardinia, May 24, 1917.
From the Dictionary Of Newfoundland English:
Quintal - a hundredweight (112 pounds); a measure of cod-fish caught by fishermen.
