Released 2002
Total Playing Time:  64:56
Available on CD or Cassette

There are many ways in which a sailor can be lost, not just in a shipwreck, but also lost at sea, lost in their career, lost in spirit, lost in the pages of history, even missing from the passenger manifest list, as in the case of the black sailors who worked on the Great Lakes during the late nineteenth century. 

It’s a little-known fact, but many Great Lakes ship captains were abolitionists, and during the late 1800’s, many slaves escaped across the border to Canada on Great Lakes vessels. In the well-known underground railroad song, Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd, says Lee Murdock, “Even I didn’t realize it until recently, but there’s a line in the song that goes

‘The old man is a-waiting, Gonna carry you to freedom,’ and that is a direct reference to the Captain of a sailing vessel.  The Captain was often referred to as ‘The Old Man.’” [read more]

Songs (click on mp3 links to hear short audio clips)

The Crack Schooner Moonlight [4:18, traditional] => [mp3, 260 Kb]
Saint Martin Island [7:56, lee murdock] => [mp3, 544 Kb]
The Wreck of the Erie Bell [3:37, james gordon]
Follow the Drinkin' Gourd [2:50, traditional]
When the Willie Went Down [4:30, larry penn]
Perry's Victory on Lake Erie [5:01, traditional]
Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Claire [4:37, traditional]
Lament for the Lost Lake Sailors [6:09, murdock instrumental] => [mp3, 354 Kb]
The Ward Line [4:43, traditional] => [mp3, 244 Kb]
The Mermaid of Ontario [2:56, shel silverstein]
Charles Conrad on the SS Badger [5:14, alex sinclair]
Shallo Brown [2:05, traditional]
The Scottish Hero [3:51, lee murdock] => [mp3, 310 Kb]
The Returning [3:32, murdock instrumental]
Phantom Ships that Pass in the Night [3:11] => [mp3, 248 Kb]

Another song which references the plight of the black sailors, taken from the traditional Great Lakes music collection at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor Michigan is The Ward Line. In the 19th century, copper and iron ore were shipped from Michigan’s upper peninsula and other Lake Superior ports, on wooden-hull sailing vessels. Before automated self-unloaders and conveyor belts, the ships were loaded by wheelbarrow, a back-breaking job. In Samuel Ward’s shipping company, freed slaves were used as laborers. They enjoyed a “free ride” while the ship was under way, but in port, they worked nonstop, sometimes for days on end, to unload and re-load the cargo.  Appropriately, the song, The Ward Line, is an a capella work song, with call-and-response chorus.

The Lost Lake Sailors is not all hard work, of course. Murdock has also recorded a whimsical rhyming song by the late Shel Silverstein, The Mermaid of Ontario, which is still one of his most-requested songs at his concerts.  And the CD opens with a traditional song about a race between two sailing vessels, from the port of Milwaukee, downboard to Buffalo or Cleveland, by The Crack Schooner Moonlight.

Well-known for his ghost stories, Murdock does not disappoint with this collection. Saint Martin Island, the story of a lighthouse keeper on a small island in Green Bay, combines tragedy, mystical heroics and a haunting melody that has already become one of Murdock’s most-requested songs in concert.  Another ghostly tale, Whent the Willie Went Down, written by Milwaukee songwriter Larry Penn, tells the story of the haunted shipwreck of the Prins Willem II, a ship that went down without loss of life, but which has claimed a number of recreational divers in Lake Michigan since that time.

The 65 minute recording is rounded out with a romantic song about The Badger, a carferry still operating between Manitowoc WI and Ludington MI;  one of the forest fires that ravaged the virgin timber which once covered nearly all of the state of Michigan, and a song about Commodore Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie in the War of 1812 (from the traditional collection).