Woody Guthrie – When That Great Ship Went Down

I was researching my post on the RMS Lusitania for my other blog (oldsteamships.blog) today, and I stumbled across this Woody Guthrie song. I had never heard it before, and I’m certainly not a Woody Guthrie expert. I know his more famous songs and his enormous influence on Bob Dylan and others, but somehow this song, sometimes listed simply as “The Great Ship,” had escaped me. The song is about the Lusitania, and hearing it while preparing a post about the ship made the two stories fit together naturally. He did conflate the Lusitania and Titanic in one line: “Felt the iceberg and shock.” No iceberg with the Lusitania, just a U-Boat and a torpedo.

The melody and title have roots in an earlier folk ballad usually associated with the Titanic. William and Versey Smith recorded “When That Great Ship Went Down” in 1927, and versions of the song had circulated for years before that. Woody often worked in that folk tradition, taking familiar melodies and structures and reshaping them around another event. His version changes the ship and much of the story, turning an older disaster ballad into a remembrance of the Lusitania.

Guthrie sings the song from the viewpoint of someone aboard the sinking liner. He describes frightened passengers, mothers and children, the cold ocean mist, and a final kiss between two people who know they may not survive. Then he names the ship directly: the Lusitania, once famous throughout the world, was sunk on May 7, 1915. Guthrie does not fill the song with historical details. He makes it personal and lets the passengers tell the story. That is what makes it work.

Guthrie recorded the song during a group of sessions made for Moses Asch in 1944 with Cisco Houston and Sonny Terry. Those recordings were not originally arranged as conventional albums, which is one reason his catalog can be a little confusing. The performance later appeared on This Land Is Your Land: The Asch Recordings, Volume 1, and another version was included in the 2012 Smithsonian Folkways collection Woody at 100. A home recording from around 1951 was also released much later as part of the archival Woody at Home collection.

When That Great Ship Went Down

Lusitania was her name
And great was her fame
And great was the shame
When this great ship went down

On the seventh day of May
In the nineteen fifteen
This good ship sailed high
And the good ship went down

I looked at my clock
Felt the iceberg and shock
Felt the whole ship a-rockin’
When this good ship went down

Lusitania was her name
And great was her fame
And great was her shame
When this good ship went down

That explosion aside
My face white with fright
I know that death was my plight
When this great ship went down

All my friends seemed numb to smile
I saw mother and child
I saw the cold waves run wild
When this great ship went down

I felt so sad to know
That this high leaping foam
Would now be my home
When this great ship went down

Told my sweetheart we’d kiss
Our last earthly kiss
In this cold ocean mist
When this great ship goes down

Lusitania was her name
And great was her fame
And great was her shame
When this good ship went down

Speak a prayer in my heart
For you souls of depart
You be torn not apart
When this great ship goes down

Speak a prayer in my heart
For you souls of depart
You be torn not apart
When this great ship goes down

Lusitania was her name
And great was her fame
And great was the shame
When this good ship went down

Lusitania was her name
And great was her fame
And great was the shame
When this great ship went down