Banks of Newfoundland, The (Version 3) Oh, ye may bless your happy lots, all ye who dwell on shore For it's little ye know of the hardships that we poor seamen bore It's little ye know of the hardships that we were forced to stand For fourteen days and fifteen nights on the Banks of Newfoundland. Our ship she sailed through frost and snow from the day we left Quebec And if we had not walked about we'd have frozen to the deck But we being true-born sailormen as ever a ship had manned Our Captain doubled our grog each day o n the Banks of Newfoundland. There never was a ship, my boys, that sailed the western sea But the billowy waves came rollin' in and bent them into staves Our ship being built of unseasoned wood and could but little stand The hurricane it met us there on the Banks of Newfoundland. We fasted for three days and nights, our provisions giving out On the morning of the fourth day we cast our lots about The lot it fell on the Captain's son; thinking relief at hand We spared him for another night on the Banks of Newfoundland. On the morning of the fifth day no vessel did appear We gave to him another hour to offer up a prayer But Providence to us proved kind, kept blood from every hand For an English vessel hove in sight on the Banks of Newfoundland. We hoisted aloft our signal; they bore down on us straightway When they saw our pitiful condition they began to weep and pray Five hundred souls we had on board the day we left land There's now alive but seventy-five on the Banks of Newfoundland. They took us off of the wreck, my boys; we were more like ghosts than men They fed us and they clothed us and brought us back again They fed us and they clothed us and brought us safe to land While the billowy waves roll o'er their graves on the Banks of Newfoundland.