The Ward Line

An article from Michigan Radio connects this song to Eber Ward's Great Lakes merchant ships and the abolitionist movement.

An alternate attribution, found in Walton & Grimm's Windjammers, Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, is given to the streamer Sam Ward, which would take a team of twenty or more black men from Detroit to load copper and ore at the Keeweena Peninsula, later unloading at some other destination. The shanty was also used by teams of black coalers at Amherstburg, Ontario and other ports. A user on mudcat provides the well-researched liner notes from The Boarding Party's album Too Far From the Shore:

This wonderful stevedoring shanty comes from the Ivan H. Walton Collection of Great Lakes songs... Many thanks to our good friend Dick Swain, who sent us a transcript of some notes about the song, from a manuscript Walton was working on prior to his death in 1968. Walton writes:

"Captain Harvey Kendall of Marysville, Michigan, from whom much of the following song was obtained in July, 1933, stated at the time that he had served for several seasons in the early 1890s as mate in the propeller *Sam Ward,* the "Old Black Sam" of the song. He added that the Wards of Detroit...had...a number of [ships]...engaged in carrying copper pigs from Houghton and Hancock on Lake Superior to Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. On the up-trip they would stop over at
Detroit and ship a deck crew of 20 or more husky Negroes...and then on the down-trip send them ashore at the same place. They were paid at the rate of about fifteen dollars a month.

"When the vessel was at the loading dock the deckhands brought the copper on board by means of hand trucks. They pushed them along as they walked in a slow
shuffling gait in a loose circle between the warehouse and the vessel. Two or three days were required, the men working continuously with only brief 'time outs,' and they sang songs during the entire loading period. The favorites were of the sea-shanty type that permitted free improvisation. As soon as the work started, someone would start a song, and, as soon as a pause came, anyone else who thought up a fitting stanza or stanzas, or could recall some old ones, would break in, and so
the song continued until a new one was begun. The singers strove for original stanzas, preferably of the kind that would get a laugh from the group."

Sometimes, near the end of the loading job, the pace would begin to slow and the officers on duty would liven things up by providing a tub of cheap liquor "doped up" with hot peppers--the "suds" of the song. Captain Kendall remarked on the one hand that the choruses of these work songs "usually made no sense," but also said he
had forgotten practically all of the songs except this one, "and I probably remember it because of the choruses. Even they knew they wasn't goin' anywhere on the wages they received and the kind of life they led."

Walton included 24 verses of "Ward Line" in his collection, obtained from Capt. Kendall and several others who served as officers on the Ward vessels. "Each stated that there were scores of other stanzas and not all were printable...The air given is that used by Captain Hayes." Walton tried to reproduce the Negro dialect, though he claimed "no proficiency" in writing it. Jonathan has adapted his stanzas from those in Walton's collection.

Both of these "Ward Lines" should not be confused with the New York and Cuba Mail, often called the "Ward."