Artist & Tune
About the Song
Someone offered a correction to our lyrics, saying that the second verse should follow the rhyme scheme and end with "and they say she's a floating shame."
We put "she's a floating hell" in Rise Again because that's what's in William Main Doerflinger's Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman, one of the most definitive collections of sea songs. It's also "hell" in the Oxford Book of Sea Songs. While "shame" may rhyme better, sailors were not always exact on their rhyming. The more credible singers seem to use "floating hell"- it's a quirk of the song that makes it interesting.