H.M.C.S. Sackville
Words and Music: Tom Lewis
(Recorded by Tom Lewis on Mixed Cargo)
There's a grey, old lady sitting by the
pier at Halifax,
When they made her kind they threw away the mould,
And it seems like no-one needs her nowadays and that's a fact,
As she sits beside the ocean growing old.
She never was a 'movie queen', and glamorous she sure ain't
been,
Many men have loved her just the same,
When she and they were in their prime in a bygone age we call
'wartime',
H.M.C.S. Sackville made her name.
When freedom called for every hand to turn-to on the sea and
land,
Sackville sailed outside the limelight's glare,
With four-inch gun and depth-charge racks
to guard against the U-boat packs,
The convoys made a bridge from here to there.
Thought not much faster than the tramps,
with the 'lease-lend' tubs sent by the Yanks,
She shepherded her flocks across the foam,
For three long years she did her job
like a faithful, fearless collie-dog,
Then, duty done, she steered a course for home.
But in the aftermath of war, too many heroes are a bore,
And each one just gets lost among the throng,
Words like: honour, glory, pride, are far too quickly set
aside,
And peacetime voices sing a different song.
But take a walk down Sackville Street
to the bottom where the harbour meets,
The town that Nova Scotian's call their own,
In livery white, blue and grey, you'll find her harboured,
safe to day,
For H.M.C.S. Sackville has come home.
The last corvette has finally found a home.
