Sad and dismal is the tale I will relate to you, About the schooner Persia, her officers and crew, Who sank beneath the stormy deep, in life to rise no more, When winds and desolation swept Lake Huron's rock-bound shore. They left Chicago on their lee, their songs they did resound, And they so full of joy and glee as homeward they were bound. They little thought the sound of death would meet them on their way, And they, so full of joy and glee, should in Lake Huron lay. The sailors' names I did not know, excepting one or two. Down in the deep they all did go; they were a luckless crew. Not a soul escaped to land to clear the mystery o'er; In watery depths they all did go, upon Lake Huron's shore. In mystery their dooms are sealed; they did collide, some day, But that is all to be revealed upon the judgment day. And when the angels take their stand to wake the waters blue, And send forth the commander of the ill-starred Persia's crew. Daniel Sullivan was their mate, a man both bold and brave, As ever was compelled by fate to fill a sailor's grave. He will be mourned as a friend; alas! his days are o'er. In watery depths be now doth lie, upon Lake Huron's shore. Oh, Dan, your many friends will mourn, your fate upon them frown; They'll wait in vain for your return back in Oswego town. They'll miss the bly glance of your eye, your hand they'll clasp no more; In watery depths you now do lie, upon Lake Huron's shore. No mother's hand was there to press that brow-distracting pain; No gentle wife was there to kiss that cold brow o'er again. No sister or no brother nigh, no little ones to mourn; Down in the deep they all did go, far from their friends and home. Around Presque Isle the seagulls scream their dismal notes along, And that is the sad requiem of the dismal funeral song. They skim along the water blue, and then aloft they soar, In memory of the Persia's crew, lost on Lake Huron's shore.

The schooner Persian was built in 1855 at Oswego, New York and worked the Great Lakes grain trade. On September 16, 1868, while carrying wheat from Chicago to Oswego, she was struck by the schooner E.B. Allen near Presque Isle on Lake Huron. The weather was clear and the Persian had the right of way. The Allen’s captain sailed on, believing the Persian would make it to shore; she did not, and all ten crew were lost. The popular feeling that this was a needless loss of life likely helped motivate the song’s creation. Ironically, the E.B. Allen herself sank in Lake Huron three years later after colliding with the schooner Newsboy in fog, though that time the other ship stayed and rescued the crew.

The ballad singles out first mate Daniel Sullivan of Oswego, “a man both bold and brave.” Some sources suggest the song was composed by Sullivan’s daughter. The earliest collected version comes from Michael Cassius Dean, an Irish-American sailor and lumberman from Minnesota, who included it in his 1922 booklet of sea and Great Lakes songs. Dean recorded it on wax cylinder in 1924 for the Gordon Collection (now at the Library of Congress). Franz Rickaby noted that the melody is shared with “Driving Saw Logs on the Plover,” another Great Lakes working song.

The wreck of the Persian lay undiscovered at 168 feet until sport divers located it in 1991. It is now part of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

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