Just a lad I was of thirteen years When my father pa**ed away And I had to take a job as a deck hand On the Molly May And the time I spent one Summer past Turned into fifty years And the sound she made as she broke the waves Still rings within my ears She was pa**ed to me when I was twenty-three Cap'n Mills went 'round the bend He saw a forerunner on the dock one night And never sailed again Superstition be damned, I sailed her proud Fair maiden of the sea There was never another like her And no one for her but me I saw the time with me in my prime No man could be my equal Through the eye of a needle I'd sail her any day When I grew older, I couldn't hold her My courage slipped away
So they put a young boy from Canso At the wheel of the Molly May I was there to see her sail away In the cold December haze But the Canso boy had never seen the likes Of the Southeast wind and waves At the harbor's mouth, she drifted South Right into Light House Rock And he smashed her keel and laid her low While I watched there from the dock I saw the days amid devil ways No man could be my equal Through the eye of a needle I'd sail her any day When I grew older, I couldn't hold her My courage slipped away So they put a young boy from Canso At the wheel of the Molly May ...And I wish that I'd gone down, boys At the wheel of the Molly May