If you think about it, the traditional sea shanties and songs that have survived to modern times are pretty exclusively man-centric. I got to wondering about the songs the women who were left ashore in the maritime towns and villages might have sung as they went about their work while their menfolk went to work at sea. If any such songs have survived, they're not many and certainly obscure by comparison.

Anyone familiar with the age of sail knows that the sea exacted a high cost in the lives of men and boys who never returned to their beloved women, leaving behind wives, daughters, sisters, aunties, sweethearts and so on. I got to thinking that the loss of so many loved ones might well have been something that women of those days would have sung about. And so I tried to imagine a sea shanty type song from that point of view, taking some inspiration from Kipling's "Captains Courageous", among other things.

Dedicated to the memory of my paternal grandmother, Ruth Paige Palomo, linguist, scholar, children's poet, world traveler, and gourmet cook. In many ways she was 50 years ahead of time, in other ways she was left behind on the shore. She quietly taught me to enjoy cooking good food, to speak Spanish, to respect other cultures and countries, and she encouraged me to explore music and be myself.