The Ship That Never Returned is an 1865 song written by Henry Clay Work, about a ship that left a harbor and never came back. No reason for why the ship never returned is given in the words of the song. A plausible explanation for a ship that never returned is that for as long as men put to sea to the present day, ships were lost at sea without a trace due to weather, unseaworthiness, or other causes—even piracy. In the 1800s, with no weather forecasting, radar or radio, this was not an uncommon event.
The melody was adapted in "Charlie on the MTA," created in 1948, as a campaign song for Walter A. O'Brian about a man who couldn't get off a Boston subway train because, rather than change all the turnstiles, the M.T.A added an exit fare—Charlie did not have the extra nickel to get off the train. The Kingston Trio recorded the song in 1959 (as "M.T.A.") and had a hit with the recording in the same year. The tune also formed the basis of "Wreck of the Old 97", about a 1903 train wreck.
Famous quotes containing the words ship and/or returned:
“But Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“[My father] was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway. He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)