Four Ballads of the USS Thresher

thresehr2We recently posted an embedded video of Tom Paxton’s song, “The Thresher Disaster” sung my threelegsofman.  about the loss of the nuclear submarine USS Thresher in 1963.  Brian Frizell pointed out that Paxton’s song was not the only ballad about the Thresher.  The Kingston Trio also sang a “Ballad of the Thresher.”  The singer/songwriters Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger also had songs about the disaster, both titled simply “The Thresher.”  Why did the sinking of this one ship inspire at least four songs?

It is probably a matter of timing. The Thresher sank during the peak of what is often referred to as the American folk music revival.  Of course, these songs about the sinking of the nuclear submarine are not the first or only songs written about the sinking of relatively modern ships.  Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” memorializes the 1975 sinking of the Great Lakes ore boat the SS Edmund Fitgerald, just as Woody Guthrie’s “Sinking of the Reuben James” recalls the men lost when a German submarine sank the Clemson-class destroyer Reuben James just before the start of World War II.  Likewise the “Titanic” song, better known as “It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down” was written sometime in the 1920 and popularized by the Carter Family.

What is interesting about the four different Thresher songs is the difference in perspective. The Kingston Trio is the most simplistically patriotic, beginning “Oh, the Thresher, the finest atomic ship, that ever dived for the sea”
with a chorus of “Every man-jack aboard was a hero.”  The Paxton version focuses on the tragedy, “Although none of them was mine, we lost 129 and I feel just like I lost a friend ..it was just a diving test, but they laid her there to rest, on that cold and lonesome ocean floor,” adding only a touch of anti-war sentiment  “and I sit and wonder why, those poor sailors had to die, and I wonder when this killing’s going to end.  Phil Ochs’ lyric is sardonically ironic – “she’ll always run silent and she’ll always run deep, though the ocean has no pity, though waves will never weep.” Not surprisingly, Pete Seeger’s version is the most political of the four – “I hope this loss will bring to pass, a day we’ll live to see, when ship’s are all designed to sail together peacefully.”

A compilation of the four songs:

Tom Paxton – The Thresher Disaster

Kingston Trio….Ballad Of The Thresher

Phil Ochs… The Thresher

Pete Seeger..The Thresher

Comments

Four Ballads of the USS Thresher — 7 Comments

  1. Thanks for this posting. As a musician, I’m always fascinated with the different ways we remember events in song.

  2. There is a 6th song about Thresher. Abner Jay has one on YouTube with extensive color videos of Thresher underway.

  3. Thank you so much for listing these songs again for me to hear. I’m just an old folkie at heart and I grew up listening to the Kingston Trio when I was still in grade school.

    I had all of the KT’s albums and the song “The Tresher” with lead vocals by John Stewart was on their album “#16”. I remember playing that song over and over again. The old records were still the best!

    Phil Ochs I learned about in high school senior English class as we had one of the coolest intern teachers who had us disect Phil’s protest album, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”! Very heavy stuff back in the ’60’s! I loved the music and I still do.

    The other two songs I was not aware of, as this was the very first time I got a chance to hear them. Both Tom Paxton and Pete Seeger were radicals in their own right and helpedto pave the path of folk/ protest music in the ’60’s as well.

    Thanks again for the music and the memories! And God bless those who were lost on the Tresher that fateful day!

    Yours historically through the art and preservation of scale ship model building-

    Frank J. Ryczek, Jr.
    Maritime Artworks Limited
    Jacksonville, Florida

  4. Another great song about the USS Thresher was written and performed in the early 60’s by a folk group out of University Of Western Ontario in London, Ontario Canada. The group was called “The Lowlanders” and the tune was recorded on an LP on the SPARTON label.