The Spring Trip of the Schooner Ambition

The spring trip was the first voyage of the fishing season for the schooner fleets of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Crews set out in late March or early April, often into rough weather, to trawl for cod on the offshore banks. It was hard, cold work: vessels iced up on deck, bait ran short, and the fish did not always cooperate.

The song The Spring Trip of the Schooner Ambition preserves one such voyage in plain detail. Captain Albert Himmelmann telephoned his crew of nineteen to report on March 29th, making the Ambition “the first to fill away.” They took on frozen squid at Canso from the Atlantic Fish Company and headed for Western Bank. When ice blocked their passage to the Magdalen Islands for fresh bait, they diverted to Prince Edward Island, then fished off Cape North. Four baitings later, the spring trip was done and “everybody’s feeling fine.” The song reads more like a log entry than a ballad, which is part of its charm: a working record of an ordinary season, sung by the captain himself.