Locked In Ice - Shirley Collins

In the year of 1831

I sailed toward the setting sun

Bringing food and fuel and guns for the Hudson bay company

Vancouver to the North West shore

Like I’d done this fifteen years or more

Little did I know what lay in store on the icy Beaufort sea

Trading cargo for the finest furs

Dragged by Eskimos and voyagers

It was early winter came that year

Through closing pack ice I did steer

Just a narrow pack of sea laid clear

Now I was home with —?

But as I crossed the Beaufort sea

The black ice, it closed in on me

It was a fearful guarantee that I’d be run to the ground

To Barrow then, the crew did go

To shelter from the wind and snow

Locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Drifting with the flow

Where the ice goes, I go

It seemed that fortune looked my way

For early on, the following day

The ice broke up and moved away

And the crew came back aboard

For two months the Alaskan shore

The black ice, it closed in once more

Cut the skyline where I’d sailed before

Like a wide and deadly sword

Captain and the thirty crew

To the safety and the shore they drew

But I was locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Drifting with the flow

Where the ice goes, I go

So without a crew, I drifted slow

Stuck fast within the pack I know

'Till a group of hunting Eskimo found me floating just offshore

Two years later, I was seen again

Heading Northward through the snow and rain

The savage men, they tried to stake their claim

But the ice made them withdraw

It was in the year of 69'

I was sighted for the final time

Locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Drifting with the flow

Locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Where the ice goes, I go

I’m a little gross ship on the Beaufort sea

Doomed to travel and —?

Locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Drifting with the flow

Locked in ice

Of a hundred years

Where the ice goes, I go

I go

I go