The ‘Rimu’ Scow

A REQUIEM TO THE ‘RIMU’ SCOW

An old barge rides to anchor

‘Midst the hulks in ‘Rotten Row’

With ‘Irish Pennants’ flying from her mast

Her decks are bruised and furrowed

By the shingle barrow’s wheel

And they dumbly tell the story of her past.

She lies out there forgotten –

No more ‘Home freights’ to bring

No more answer to the Helmsman’s Hand,

No more to Yaw and wallow as she tramps home Wing’n wing,

Her line submerged with a heavy load of sand.

The gulls in season nest upon the foremast trussle tree,

From the Register she is listed with the wrecks,

Corrosion has eaten out those once strong knees

That stoutly held her bulwarks to the decks.

The broken wheel turns idly as if some unseen hand

Is trying now to get her under weigh,

As if some scowman’s spirit feels she is too close to the land

And I seem to hear that Phantom helmsman say –

‘Go for’rard to the head sails boy we’ll have to come about’

‘Stand ready now to let the head sheets go,’

He takes a glance to wind’ard, spins the wheel hard up,

And shouts along the deck that magic word ‘lee-oo-o’.

I hear the head sails chatter and the head sheets crack and flail

As she turns her old blunt bows out of the bay,

I watch that Phantom helmsman flatten in that huge mainsail

He is leaving her no chance here to ‘miss-stay’.

And she slowly turns to Wind’ard

Slowly, as if against her will,

Then on the other tack she slowly drifts,

I see the head sails belly and the fore and mainsails fill

As they ‘sweat up’ on the weather topping lifts.

But it’s all a flight of fancy, the old sailing scow is done,

On the jagged reefs and bars they’ve left their bones,

Like the able hands who manned them they have passed on one by one

To take their well earned rest with ‘Davey Jones’.