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 on the Banks of Newfoundland

There never was a ship, my boys, that sailed the western sea

But the billowy waves came rolling 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 the graves on the Banks of Newfoundland