ca. 1880
Click to listen to Ian Bell sing The Bentely
Come shipmates and listen, a story I’ll tell
About a flash packet,[i] you all know her well.
She is a flash packet, a packet of fame,
She hails from Toronto, and Bentley’s her name.
Chorus: Derry down, down, down, derry down.
The dimensions of this packet now to you I’ll tell.
She was built by the yard and cut off by the mile;
She’s round stem and bluff forward, no deadrise[ii] at all;
And she’s owned in Toronto by Alderman Hall.
I shipped in this packet at the Northern docks,
I took a streetcar from the Church Street to Brock;
And from there I steered straight for the ship
With a satchel in one hand, in the other a grip.
But on the way down I got blazing drunk,
I lost the old satchel and busted my trunk;
I tripped and I tumbled, and down I did fall,
And I cursed the old Bentley, the sidewalks and all.
At last to the ship I chanced for to stray,
And the Captain same forward saying, “We’ll get underway.
We’re bound for Charlotte,[iii] going there to load coal;”
And down the rough Lake the old Bentley did roll.
I was tired and weary; oh yes, I was sick
From hearing the pumps go “clackety-click.”
My bones they were sore from lying in my bunk,
And the rotten old bedclothes were nothing but junk.
Then we left off Charlotte for the Welland Canal,
And forget that last trip? Oh no, I ne’er shall!
And then on our port bow Port Dalhousie did loom,
All hands gathered forward to top the jibboom.[iv]
We towed into the harbour, our jibboom topped high,
And all of the people they started to cry:
“Oh, where did you get it? Where did it come from?”
Or, “Where in the devil does that raft belong?”
And when we got ready to go in the lock,
The Sammies all gathered like geese in a flock;
And sure Grogan was there, and he shinned up a fender
Saying, “Captain you know me, I’m an old locktender.”
There lives in Toronto an ugly old thief,
He’s called, “Burk, the butcher, who sells the tough beef.”
It gives us the toothache and causes much pain.
We’ll murder the old villain when we go there again.
We worked at canalling the entire night,
And in order to work we had to keep tight;
But now the next morning the Captain did say;
“At last we’ve arrived in Gravelly Bay.”[v]
[i] Flash packet: a fast medium-sized boat designed to carry freight, domestic mail, documents and passengers.
[ii] Deadrise: the amount of angle on a ship formed between its keel and a horizontal plane on either side of the keel. This boat was probably a “canaller” (i.e. with the wheelhouse at the prow).
[iii] Charlotte: located at the mouth of the Genesee River in New York State, it is located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario and served as a harbor for Rochester, N.Y.
[iv] Jibboom: a spar extending the bowsprit on sailing ships. Before a canaller could enter the Welland Canal, the headsails would be taken in and the jibboom unstripped and brought inboard or lashed to the foremast.
[v] Gravelly Bay: an area on Lake Erie that was selected in 1831 as the southern terminus for the First Welland Canal. From 1831, it was already referred to as “Port Colborne.” In 1833, permission was sought from Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Colborne to officially name the port town in his honour.
Published in Spirit of the Big Ditch: The Story of the Welland Canals in Pictures, Poems and Songs. Compiled, edited and annotated by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor. St. Catharines: The Historical Society of St. Catharines, 2024
The Historical Society of St. Catharines 