You wonder why so many would be buried in the sea,
In this world of froth and bubble,
But I don-t wonder, for it seems to me
That it saves such a lot of trouble.
And there ain-t no undertaker-
Oh! there ain-t no order that your friends can give
On the quiet to the coffin-maker-
To a gimcrack coffin-maker,
They make no differ twixt the absentee swell
And the clerk that cut from a -shortage�-
Oh! there ain-t no pauper funer-el,
And there ain-t no -impressive cortege.�
It may be a chap from the for-ard crowd,
Or a member of the British Peerage,
But they sew his nibs in a canvas shroud
Just the same as the bloke from the steerage-
As that poor bloke from the steerage.
There ain-t no need for a gravedigger there,
For you dig your own grave! Lord love yer!
And there ain-t no use for a headstone fair
When the waters close above yer!
The little headstone where they come to weep,
May be right for the land-s dry-rotters,
But you rest just as sound when you-re anchored deep
With the pigiron at your trotters-
(Our fathers had iron at their trotters).
The sea is democratic the wide world round,
And it don-t give a hang for no man,
There ain-t no Church of England burial ground,
Nor yet there ain-t no Roman.
Orthodox and het-rodox by wreck-strewn cliffs,
At peace in the stormiest weather,
Might bob up and down like two brother -stiffs,�
And rest in one shark together-
And mix up their bones together.

The bare-headed skipper is as good any day
As an authorised shifter of sin is,
And the tear of shipmate is better anyway
Than the tear of the next-of-kin is.
It saves your friends, and it fills your needs,
It is best when all is reckoned,
And she can-t come there in her widder weeds,
With her eyes on a likely second-
And a spot for the likely second.