Lyrics

1. The world’s biggest ship
Titanic it was called
now left England
for New York’s harbor.

2. In the harbor of Southampton
this ship was built,
and there from the shipyard
was lowered to waters.

3. That ship was made
to be the world’s biggest,
and everyone judged
it to be the king of ships.

4. But it had not been granted
that big honor,
that tried to now strive for
the manager of the company.

5. A big record
they left to try
and a new record
for the company to win.

6. Their goal
was the ship’s record,
that abolished their fears
and dimmed their mind.

7. Ismay he with glad mind
sits in his cabin
has strong trust
for the big skill.

8. But the big amazement
now reached him,
when he heard
that the ship is sinking.

9. He in amazement
now rose to the deck
and said in anger:
“The record is going down!”

10. The captain yelled to his crew:
“Lower the boats
and life preservers
to the passengers give!”

11. Wives and children first
lower to boats,
to men only then
try to save.

12. And officers and crew
they crudely used
and melancholy plays
on the ship they acted.

13. They husbands from their wives
separated cruelly
and with their revolvers
many lives took.

14. There was no sense of pity
with that ship’s crew,
when the panicking you shot
with your revolver.

15. On the sea are drifting
the bodies of the dead,
that savior could
not have on the boat.

16. Oh that poor mother,
who in the life preserver
with her two children
rests dead on the sea.

17. Tenderly pressed
had she her children to the chest
and there fallen
to eternal sleep.

18. To mother’s love
there is no comparison
and that death’s sorrow
cannot be told with language.

19. A big mass of people
waited in New York,
that the world’s biggest ship
would arrive to the harbor.

20. But the ship did not arrive any longer,
it was sunk to the waves,
that no-one yet had owned
known how to.

21. That place became called
the Dead sea,
but how can Ismay take responsibility
for the behalf of everyone.

Source: Asplund 1994, pp. 772-773.
Collector: Liisa Kylmänen
Year: 1959.