Lewin of Greenwich Naval History & Forum

Presently the piano went back to a song. Windram played a few bars of 'The Road to the Isles', then stopped. It was the signal! When the lilting tune began again every voice in the wardroom started to sing what had now become almost a shanty in Canadian ships, written by a surgeon-lieutenant who had been in the Barber Pole Group:

It's away! Outward the swinging fo'c'sles reel
From the smoking sea's white glare upon the strand. It's the grey miles that are slipping under keel
When we're rolling outward-bound from Newfoundland From Halifax to Newfiejohn or 'Derry's clustered towers By trackless paths where conning towers roll.
If you know another group in which you'd sooner spend your hours,
You've never sailed beneath the Barber Pole! It's the grey seas that are slipping under keel
When you're rolling outward-bound from Newfoundland. So beware! Harbours that berth the Barber Pole,
If you'd keep the situation well in hand,
After grey seas that went slipping under keel
When we wallowed outward-bound from Newfoundland. Drink a whisky or a navy rum or drink a gin-and-lime Let inebriation be your final goal:
Pick a lady you've selected for a short and merry time, There's merry men beneath the Barber Pole!
After grey seas that went slipping under keel
When we wallowed outward-bound from Newfoundland. It's away! Astern of us the Western Islands die,
There's an ocean lies before us to be spanned.
It's the grey seas where sullen icebergs lie
When we're rolling inward-bound to Newfoundland. From Halifax to Newfiejohn or' Derry's clustered towers, By trackless paths where conning towers roll.
If you know another group in which you'd sooner spend your hours, You've never sailed beneath the Barber Pole!
It's the grey seas where sullen icebergs lie
When we're rolling inward-bound to Newfoundland.

and of course the Barber Pole is as alive today as when Alan Easton wrote about it all those years ago.
tim

An original colour image of Flower Class Corvette HMCS Regina c 1942...She took part in convoy escort duties during WWII and fought primarily in the Battle of the Atlantic, she was torpedoed and sunk on August 8th 1944 by Type VIIC Submarine U-667 off Trevose Head, 30 crew members were killed.

Flower Class Corvette HMCS Collingwood pictured off Cornwallis, Nova Scotia in 1941.

Flower Class Corvette HMCS Trillium pictured at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1941, she was returned from the RCN in June 1945 and sold for civilian use and scrapped 1971....*Note the Canadian Power Boat Co MTB V-252 in the foreground.