They had a last supper the day of the beaching   She's a dead ship sailing skeleton crew   The galley is empty, the stove pots are cooling   With what's left of the stew      The time is approaching, the captain moves over   The hangman steps in to do what he's paid for   With the wind down the tide   She goes proud ahead steaming   And he drives her hard into the shore      So far from the Clyde   Together we ride   We did ride      As if to a wave from her bows to her rudder   Bravely she rises to meet with the land   Under their feet they all feel her keel shatter   The shallow sea washes their hands      Later the captain shakes hands with the hangman   And climbs slowly down to the oily wet ground   Goes 'bout to the car that has come here to take him   To the graveyard and back to the town      So far from the Clyde   Together we ride   We did ride      They pull out her cables and hack off her hatches   Too poor to be wasteful with pity or time   They swarm on her carcass with torches and axes   Like a whale on the bloody shoreline      Stripped of her pillars, her stays and her stanchions   When there's only her bones on the wet poison land   Steel ropes will drag her with winches and engines   'Til it's only a stain on the sand      So far from the Clyde   Together we ride   We did ride      So far from the Clyde   Together we ride   We did ride