Lyric
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She went down last October in a pouring driving rain.
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The skipper, he’d been drinking and the Mate, he felt no pain.
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Too close to Three Mile Rock, and she was dealt her mortal blow,
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And the Mary Ellen Carter settled low.
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There were just us five aboard her when she finally was awash.
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We’d worked like hell to save her, all heedless of the cost.
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And the groan she gave as she went down, it caused us to proclaim
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That the Mary Ellen Carter would rise again.
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Well, the owners wrote her off; not a nickel would they spend.
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“She gave twenty years of service, boys, then met her sorry end. But insurance paid the loss to us, so let her rest below.”
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Lyric
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Then they laughed at us and said we had to go.
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But we talked of her all winter, some days around the clock,
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She’s worth a quarter million, afloat and at the dock.
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And with every jar that hit the bar, we swore we would remain
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And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again.
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Rise again, rise again, that her name not be lost
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To the knowledge of men.
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Those who loved her best and were with her till the end
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Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again.
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All spring, now, we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend.
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Lyric
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Three dives a day in hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends.
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Thank God it’s only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
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Or I’d never have the strength to go below.
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But we’ve patched her rents, stopped her vents, dogged hatch and porthole down.
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Put cables to her, ‘fore and aft and girded her around.
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Tomorrow, noon, we hit the air and then take up the strain.
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And make the Mary Ellen Carter Rise Again.
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For we couldn’t leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale.
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She’d saved our lives so many times, living through the gale
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And the laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave
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Lyric
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They won’t be laughing in another day...
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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
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With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
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Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
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And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
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Rise again, rise again – though your heart it be broken
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And life about to end
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No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend.
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Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.
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