Tags
Australian bush poetry, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, dry dock, globtik tokyo, poem, poetry, Sembawang, ship, Singapore
Great oil companies they paid;
Ishi-kawa-jima laid
For a mighty ship a keel;
Built her out of solid steel.
Big as supertankers go
was the Globtik Tokyo.
Length twelve hundred feet or so,
was the Globtik Tokyo.
Fifty thousand horse power geared;
Swiftly through the seas she sheared.
Sixteen knots her speed at top;
Took three miles for her to stop.
Half a million tons displaced;
Engineers a problem faced:
This the largest ship on Earth,
For repairs where would she berth?
On the globe no dock or slip
That could take this super-ship;
On a coast of mud and rock
Men must build a great dry dock.
Who would have the expertise?
Who would this great challenge seize?
Men who’d built the Snowy Scheme;
Men who weren’t afraid to dream.
At the Sembawang shipyard,
Thousands neath the sun toiled hard,
Sweating as the concrete poured;
Up, the mighty walls they soared.
Steel to reinforce its core;
Six feet thick the dry dock floor.
On a thousand piles it sits,
Driven deep by mighty hits.
Built by Theiss and Petrosea;
Filled with water from the sea.
In sails the great ship in turn;
Fits so neat from stem to stern.
Thirty feet she takes of draught;
Open up the culvert shaft!
Drain the water level low;
Behold the Globtik Tokyo!
Copyright © Dennis N. O’Brien, 2011
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