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Boomer Anthems:  Wooden Ships  (“No glowing metal on our ship of wood”)


“Can you tell me, please, who won?”

“Wooden Ships” is a song written and composed by David Crosby, Paul Kantner, and Stephen Stills, of which versions were eventually recorded both by Crosby, Stills & Nash and by Jefferson Airplane; Kantner was a founding member of the latter team. It was written and composed in 1968 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a boat named the Mayan, owned by Crosby, who composed the music, while Kantner and Stills wrote most of the lyrics…..

The words of the song depict the horrors confronting the survivors of a nuclear holocaust in which the two sides have annihilated each other. A man from one side stumbles upon a man (or woman, as in Jefferson Airplane’s version) from the other side and asks him/her, “Can you tell me, please, who won?” Since the question has no real meaning in the circumstances or even at all, it is left unanswered. To stay alive, they share “purple berries”, as a result of which they “haven’t got sick once” (iodine pills, which protect against radioactive iodine-131 in nuclear fallout). The lyrics beg “silver people on the shoreline,” described by David Crosby as “guys in radiation suits,” to “let us be.”[1] As the wooden ships, devoid of metal that would become radioactive from neutron activation, are carrying the survivors away from the shores, radiation poisoning kills those who have not made it aboard. That grim tableau is described thus:

Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving you don’t need us

It is also described in an [unsung] prelude, included in the lyric sheet:

Black sails knifing through the pitchblende night
Away from the radioactive landmass madness
From the silver-suited people searching out
Uncontaminated food and shelter on the shores
No glowing metal on our ship of wood
Only free happy crazy people naked in the universe.

– – Wooden Ships – Wikipedia

And it’s a fair wind blowin’ warm
Out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I’ll set a course and go….

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Nori August 15, 2017, 8:55 PM

    Captain VanderLeun, thank you for this voyage.
    Eighth grade,VietNam war raging,Nineteen Sixty Fucking Eight.
    Beautiful song. Beautiful harmonies. Beautiful guitars. I would listen,small transistor radio held to my ear, for it to be played on KRUX radio,and be transported to silent bliss when it came on.

  • bfwebster August 16, 2017, 7:14 AM

    One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums. Being a teenager in the late 60s and early 70s — and the son of a military man — I found the song very haunting and hoped it would not be prophetic.

  • Callmelennie August 16, 2017, 2:24 PM

    Wassup Nori, I used to listen to KRIZ radio myself …. but I didn’t have to wait for the song. One of my brothers bought the album and I’d play Wooden Ships all the time. The last two full stanzas just sent chills down my spine all the way to my pinky toes.

    (BTW, you are talking about KRUX radio in Phoenix, aren’t you?)

  • Nori August 16, 2017, 8:39 PM

    Indeed,Lennie. The KRIZ Wiz-Bangs and the KRUX of rival AM radio. Toggled between both stations,constantly. Playlist for both was essentially the same,just had to catch that favorite song
    betweenst the commercial interruptions.
    Black sails knifing through the pitchblende night.

  • Callmelennie August 17, 2017, 9:13 AM

    And as for “Nineteen Fucking Sixty Eight”, we are talking about the very same 1968 when I turned 13 years old, are we not?

    And as for this so-called “Eighth Grade”, would that be the final grade of elementary school which I also entered in the aforereferenced “Nineteen Fucking Sixty Eight”?

  • Callmelennie August 17, 2017, 9:14 AM

    And as for “Nineteen Fucking Sixty Eight”, we are talking about the very same 1968 when I turned 13 years old, are we not?

    And as for this so-called “Eighth Grade”, would that be the final grade of elementary school which I also entered in the aforereferenced “Nineteen Fucking Sixty Eight”?

  • Nori August 17, 2017, 3:41 PM

    That’s the year. Tet Offensive, MLK & RFK assassinations, malodorous yippies getting heads & butts kicked at the DNC convention in Chicago. Not exactly good times,but the music was memorable.

  • Millie_woods August 17, 2017, 5:27 PM

    The music wasn’t worth it.

    https://youtu.be/NM676YszFH4

  • ghostsniper August 18, 2017, 10:59 AM

    Well how ’bout that, I was 13 in 68 too, but in junior high not elementary.
    #1 song that year was Hey Jude.