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14 Sailors' Porn-Hype

From Mary Celeste
©
Roland Clare 1993


[Interval ends. Late afternoon, same place. The lifeboat has been restored to Mary Celeste's deck. The sun is setting and it is evidently colder. Some Tourists are back at their café tables, others read newspapers in deck-chairs, and continue to speculate about Mary Celeste; no sign of Arthur, but his toy ship still lies where it was]

[The Harbour Girls stop waitressing in the café to dance a hornpipe, round the toy ship, in the national dress of various lands; lecherous Naval Ratings on shore-leave come up to try their luck with them. They eye the girls keenly but they are going to get short shrift]

Tourists {barber's-shop style}
Newfoundland to Australia
the long, the tall, the short
they say a jolly sailor
has a girl in every port

Rating 1
Well the girls in France,
you should see them dance
they are gracious and they're charming
'til a jolly tar
wants a baisez-moi
their reaction's quite alarming

[Another Rating proffers a cheek to the girl of his choice, but rather than kissing him she gives him a slap]

Rating 2
Well the girls in Italy
dance so prettily
Nothing could be finer
but when I'm in Rome
will they take me home?
Not for all the tea in China

[Another Rating proffers a cheek to the girl of his choice, but rather than kissing him she gives him a slap]

Ratings {barber's-shop style}
Our love life is a failure
of the most depressing sort
I am a sorry sailor
not a girl in any port

Rating 3
I could tell you tales
of the girls in Wales
they are full of Celtic promise
but they all refuse
to take IOU's
from the likes of Old John Thomas

[Another Rating proffers a cheek to the girl of his choice, but rather than kissing him she gives him a slap; the next Rating to appear is of absurdly piratical appearance, wooden leg, hook, etc.]

Rating 4
I would like to mention
a lovely wench in
a bar in old Jamaica
but I had to beg,
pay an arm and a leg
before she let me take her

[During instrumental verse loudhailer instructions are heard: 'all aboard'. A Rich Captain appears, summoning the Ratings back to the ship]

Ratings {barber's-shop style}
That hurry-home loud-hailer!
Get back on ship we ought
Pity the jolly sailor
it's the same in every port

[They dutifully disappear. Another brief instrumental verse during which the girls dance, with renewed vigour, around the Rich Captain, who sings as they bear him away]

Rich Captain
A Gibraltar maid
must be fully paid
and then you're free to board her
On a rating's pay
you could wait all day
But a Captain can afford her! 


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