Standard (EADGBE)

Verse i

 How still lies the bay, in the light western airs

 Which blow from the crimson horizon

 Once more we tack home, with a dry empty hole

 Saving nets with the breezes so fair

 She's a kindly cape islander, old but still sound

 But so lost in the long liners shadow

 Make and Break and make do, but the fish are so few

 That she won't be replaced should she flounder

Verse ii

Now its so hard to not think of before the big war

When the cod went so cheap, but so plenty

Foreign trawlers go by now with long seeking eyes

Taking all where we seldom take any

And the young folk don't stay with the fisherman's ways

Long ago they all moved to the cities

And the ones left behind old and tired and blind

Won't work for a pound, for a penny.

Chorus

 In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few

 Too many are hold up and rotten.

 Most towns stand empty old nets hung to dry

 Are blown away lost and forgotten

Verse iii

Now I can see the big draggers that stirred up the bay

Leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom

And they think it don't pay to respect the old ways

That make and break men have not forgotten

For we still keep our time to the turn of the tide

In this boat that I built with my father

Still lifts to the sky, "wan loller" and I

Still talk like old friends on the water