Another friend, Gina Dunlap, took the well-known song How Can I Keep From Singing, and wrote a new set of verses on a whaling theme: What Fortunes Guide a Sailor.

We're bound away upon the tide
To leave our friends behind us
Haul anchor chains and slip away
To break the ties that bind us.
Fast on the breeze to the northern seas
What fortunes guide a sailor?
To earn a share of the oil and bone
'Tis a hard life for a whaler.

Through many dangers unforeseen
And bitter storms to try us
Cold icy winds and towering waves
The faintest star to guide us.
When darkening skies around us close
'Neath Greenland's cliffs forsaken
Ten thousand miles away from home
And hearts are nearly breaking.

And when at last we hear the cry
And all in wild commotion
The cutting blast, and down she dives
In that dreary troubled ocean.
And when that whale has breathed her last
And sea-birds left to grieve her
We'll hoist the sails and steer for home
And it's, Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her.

© Golden Hind Music