Lyrics Locked In Ice - Shirley Collins

Locked In Ice

In the year of 1831
I sailed toward the setting sun
Bringing food and fuel and guns for the Hudson bay company
Vancouver to the North West shore
Like I’d done this fifteen years or more
Little did I know what lay in store on the icy Beaufort sea
Trading cargo for the finest furs
Dragged by Eskimos and voyagers
It was early winter came that year
Through closing pack ice I did steer
Just a narrow pack of sea laid clear
Now I was home with —?
But as I crossed the Beaufort sea
The black ice, it closed in on me
It was a fearful guarantee that I’d be run to the ground
To Barrow then, the crew did go
To shelter from the wind and snow
Locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Drifting with the flow
Where the ice goes, I go
It seemed that fortune looked my way
For early on, the following day
The ice broke up and moved away
And the crew came back aboard
For two months the Alaskan shore
The black ice, it closed in once more
Cut the skyline where I’d sailed before
Like a wide and deadly sword
Captain and the thirty crew
To the safety and the shore they drew
But I was locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Drifting with the flow
Where the ice goes, I go
So without a crew, I drifted slow
Stuck fast within the pack I know
'Till a group of hunting Eskimo found me floating just offshore
Two years later, I was seen again
Heading Northward through the snow and rain
The savage men, they tried to stake their claim
But the ice made them withdraw
It was in the year of 69'
I was sighted for the final time
Locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Drifting with the flow
Locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Where the ice goes, I go
I’m a little gross ship on the Beaufort sea
Doomed to travel and —?
Locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Drifting with the flow
Locked in ice
Of a hundred years
Where the ice goes, I go
I go
I go