To the tune of “Death of the Bear”, by Ronnie Drew

 

There’s many the vagrant the ocean to sail

The shoals of the herring the lonely old whale

And the hull of the liner that’s tossed on the gale

The ghost ship Lyubov Orlava 

 

From the Yugoslav docks they launched her so proud 

‘Round to Vladivostok, the pride of the crowd
A Soviet starlet to Christen her bow
They sent her to sail the antarctic

 

But times wore along and the decades crept by

Her owners sold off when their debt was too high 

It was in St John’s Harbor they left her to die 

Abandoned, unmanned, and unwanted 

 

The Newfoundland sailors decided to pull

Her down to dominica to scrap up her hull 

But the sea claims her prize and the storm made the cull

And they lost her halfway down the seaboard 

 

Across the Atlantic the gulf stream does shift 

And past the green coastline of Britain it lifts

The boats that drop off her like orphans adrift

Are all that she leaves for her passing 

 

And now like a coffin she rocks on the foam 

The wind is her captain the wave is her home 

And the rats in her hull just quarrel and roam 

And their stomachs grow leaner and hungry 

 

She’ll wander no more by the antarctic shore 

Nor dance in the Kara or hear the north roar 

The rats and the gulls are her crew evermore 

Until the Atlantic reclaims her