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The 5​,​000 Flames of John Shaw's Hell

from Age and Wonder by The Waxwings

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about

True events described in a log kept aboard the British ship Forest Eagle during an 1861 voyage by John O. Shaw, Coolie Master. Although slavery had been abolished in the empire almost 30 years prior, the exploitation of Asian laborers (“coolies”) often bore a striking resemblance. This song is a ballad told
from the imagined perspective of one of the human cargo on board. -E.S.

lyrics

They call me coolie number 139
My name’s been erased and a number assigned
On a ship bound for Cuba, out of old Macau
To work the plantations of sugar and tobacco
The coolie master’s paid five dollars a head
To deliver us alive but gets nothing for the dead
A more cold hearted man I swear I never saw
This coolie master’s name was John O. Shaw

Number 326 was a hard fightin' man
In the Opium Wars he defended Foshan
But he took up the habit just after the war
And that’s how they lured him away from the shore
When five weeks at sea the supply it ran out
He screamed and he wretched and he twisted about
He jumped overboard on the 47th day
That was five dollars less for John Shaw’s pay

Number 7 worked the fields a harvesting rice
A quiet sort of man I heard him speak only twice
Once of the fortune they promised he would find
And once of the girl that he left behind
He’d send back for her just as soon as he got free
But the slow fever took him he was buried at sea
A black haired girl’s waiting in a yellow silk dress
And old John Shaw get’s five dollars less

220 was a fisherman from the Pearl River’s shore
Like his brother on the Kate Hooper four years before
He conspired with 6 others to blow up the ship
So they put him in Irons for the rest of the trip
Refusing to eat, the master tried in vain
To feed him full of cungy but he died there in chains
Never to return to his Shenzhen Port
And old John Shaw’s another five dollars short

Sailing from February on into May
And a month of quarantine in the Havana bay
The doctor is drunk and the food’s all gone bad
We’re sick & we’re dying & we’re stark-raving mad
From consumption and dropsy and opium withdrawal
The number of dead was one hundred in all
Never more to see another red sunset
And that’s five hundred dollars John Shaw won’t get

This is but one of a thousand more tales
Of deception, abduction and death under sail
Robbed of our home and deprived of our will
By unscrupulous brokers with quotas to fill
The dead among us envied by those who stay alive
For the darkest fate awaits you after you arrive
The misery of slavery no tongue can ever tell
But there’s five thousand flames in John Shaw’s Hell

credits

from Age and Wonder, track released August 8, 2011
written by Eric Schopmeyer
performed by the Waxwings
[Eric Schopmeyer/lead vocals, guitar; Adrienne Leverette/vocals, tenor ukulele; Kurt Weist/vocals, guitar; Mark Schopmeyer/banjo; Matt Marchyok/fiddle; Tony Jamesbarry/bass]
recorded and mixed by Kevin Nettleingham

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The Waxwings Portland, Oregon

The Waxwings is a band of friends from Portland, OR. We take our diverse musical influences (classical, rock, folk, what have you) and channel them through acoustic instruments to unearth themes of love, loss and the pursuit of soul-searching redemption. ... more

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