The Mighty Filberts: Music

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In 2006 my husband, Frank, and I were at Rockaway Beach in Oregon when we noticed a series of metal ship ribs buried in the sand. Frank knew right away what we were looking at because he grew up in Rockaway. He told me the story of the Emily Reed, a coal ship that broke apart in the waves near Twin Rocks (possibly it collided with Twin Rocks). Half of the ship's ribs are in Garibaldi and the other half lay at rest in Rockaway. The wreckage is only uncovered every several years when the tide is very low and there has been a storm. I researched the story and found it so fascinated that I knew it called out to become a folk song.

The Emily Reed sailed over the seas
and she started in New South Wales.
Carrying coal, o'er the waves she would roll
'till she met with the Oregon gales.
'Twas a cold, dark night and a fog soaked rain
and the year it was 1908
and the dark of the night didn't shed her much light
and the morning arrived much too late.


Ahh....


Through the raging sea and the pounding surf
the captain did his best
but a mighty lurch and a final crack
brought her to the rest.
And those who escaped on the port side
will live in legacy
for they seized the only lifeboat
and stole their way to the sea.


Ahh...


And they knew that their crew mates were stranded
but they left them just the same.
Perhaps they gave a backwards glance
or feared themselves to blame.
They were thrown about on that stormy night;
those restless refugees
but a mighty lurch and a final crack
took their lives at sea.


Ahh...


And the choice that they made on that fateful day
determined their destiny;
to the left to the right, was it wrong was it right
to live or to die in the sea?
As the ship broke apart in relentless surf
the stranded made their flee
to the starboard side they jumped into waves
that were just above their knees.


Ahh...


And they waded safely to the shore
and their they lived their days
and the bones of that great schooner
lay buried in Rockaway.
Can you hear the widows wailing?
Can you see that phantom sail?
As the ghosts of that good ship Emily Reed
sing this mournful tale.


Ahh...