All Bound To Go
(Heave Away / Heave Away, My Johnnies)
Jenny Walker version
Oh Johnny was a rover
And today he sails away
Ch: Heave away, my Johnny, heave away
Oh Johnny was a rover
And today he sails away
Ch: Heave away, my bully boys, we're all bound to go
As I was walking out one day,
Down by the Albert Dock
I heard an emigrant Irish girl
Conversing with Tapscott
"Good morning, Mister Tapscott, sir"
"Good morn, my gel," sez he,
"It's have you got a Packet Ship
All bound for Amerikee?"
"Oh yes, I've got a Packet Ship,
I have got one or two.
I've got the Jenny Walker,
and I've got the Kangeroo."
"I've got the Jenny Walker
And today she does set sail,
With five and fifty emigrants
And a thousand bags o' male (meal)."
Bad luck to thim Irish sailor boys,
Bad luck to thim I say.
For they all got drunk, and broke into me bunk
And stole me clo'es away.
Henry Clay version
Sometimes we're bound for Liverpool,
more times we're bound for France
Ch: Heave away, my Johnny, heave away, away!
Sometimes we're bound for Liverpool,
more times we're bound for France
Ch: And away, my Johnny boy, we're all bound to go!
Oh, Johnny, you're a rover, and to-day you sail away.
It's I will be your own sweetheart if you will only stay.
As I walked out one morning down by the Clarence Dock,
I chanced to hear an Irish girl conversing with Tapscott.
"Oh, good morning, Mister Tapscott," "Good morn, my gal," says he;
"Oh, it's have you got a packet ship for to carry me over the sea?"
"Oh yes, I have a packet ship, a packet of note and fame;
She's lying in the Waterloo Dock, and the Henry Clay's her name."
"Bad luck unto the Henry Clay, and the day that she set sail,
For them sailors got drunk, broke into me bunk and stole me clothes away.
"It was at Castle Garden they landed me on shore,
And if I marry a Yankee boy, I'll cross the seas no more."
The final verses provided here, from Joanna Colcord’s Roll and Go, refer to Irish emigration to America in the 1850s, much of which passed through the ports of Liverpool. She offers two more verses, from a version possibly “brought to sea by some homesick English farmer-boy”:
It’s of a farmer’s daughter so beautiful, I’m told; Her father died and left her five hundred pounds in gold.
Her uncle and the squire rode out one summer’s day; Young William is in favor, her uncle he did say,
etc.
William Tapscott was the Liverpool agent for the Black Ball Line and Red Cross Line of American packet ships. Such emigrant house masters were notoriously shameless.