Some people, it seems, are born to be out on the water. They might be paddling down a river, rowing across a lake, sailing around a harbor or opening the throttle on a speedboat. Or they might be career sailors on a freighter, or staff members on a cruise ship. For them, navigating a vessel through a body of water is a joy, a pastime, a lifestyle.

Me? Can’t say I’ve ever been much of a boat person. I’m a decent swimmer, so it’s certainly not a fear of drowning, but it somehow makes me a little uneasy to be out on the water for very long. I prefer keeping my feet planted on terra firma, watching the boats and ships come and go, as in the harbor in Santa Barbara pictured below.

Songwriters have been writing for centuries about traveling the high seas and the narrow waterways of the world. There’s something romantic about it (maybe that’s why they refer to boats as “she”), and boating offers an apt metaphor for negotiating the crests and troughs of life.

In perusing the songs of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, I’ve come up with a collection of 16 songs with boat or ship in the title, with another dozen that snuck on the list as honorable mentions. There’s a Spotify playlist at the end of the post, so you can listen as you read about these familiar and lesser-known songs about watercraft, and maybe provide a soundtrack for the next time you venture out across the water.  

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“If I Had a Boat,” Lyle Lovett, 1987

Houston-born Lovett has enjoyed a prolific career singing and writing folk, country, swing, rockabilly and Americana music over an award-winning career spanning four decades. From his highly praised second LP, “Pontiac,” which reached #12 on country charts in 1987, the opening track is this engaging tune on which the narrator fantasizes about owning a boat and a pony and living an easy life as a single man: “And if I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean, /And if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat, /And we could all together go out on the ocean, Me upon my pony on my boat…”

“Ship of Fools,” Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band, 1976

After nearly a decade as a struggling solo artist out of Detroit, rocker Bob Seger formed The Silver Bullet Band in 1976 and immediately hit pay dirt with the seminal “Night Moves” LP. The title track, “Mainstreet” and “Rock and Roll Never Forgets” got most of the airplay, but I’ve always enjoyed the deep track “Ship of Fools,” about an ill-fated fictional voyage where warning signs were ignored: “The wind came building from the cold northwest, and soon the waves began to crest, /Crashing ‘cross the forward deck, all hands lost, /I alone survived the sinking, I alone possessed the tools on that ship of fools…“

“Come On Down to My Boat,” Every Mother’s Son, 1967

Wes Farrell was a songwriter/producer with a number of hit songs in the ’60s and ’70s, including The McCoys’ “Hang On Sloopy,” Jay & The Americans’ “Come a Little Bit Closer,” The Shirrelles’ “Boys” and The Partridge Family’s “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted.” In 1967, he collaborated with Jerry Goldstein to write “Come On Down to My Boat,” a #6 hit for the New York pop group Every Mother’s Son. The narrator fancies a girl sitting on the dock who’s under the thumb of her father’s protective nature: “She smiled so nice like she wants to come with me uh, huh, /But she’s tied to the dock and she can’t get free, /Come on down to my boat, baby, come on down where we can play…”

“Boat Drinks,” Jimmy Buffett, 1979

Buffett wrote this party song on a cold February day in Boston when he was homesick for the warmer climate of Florida. He and his band figured they’d order boat drinks (mostly rum concoctions) to get their minds off how cold they were in New England: “Boat drinks, waitress, I need two more boat drinks, /Then I’m headin’ south ‘fore my dream shrinks, /I gotta go where it’s warm…” Although it was never released as a single, it was a popular track from his “Volcano” LP in 1979 and became a regular song in his concert set list. 

“River Boat Song,” J.J. Cale, 1989

Cale had a marvelously chill vocal delivery to match the easygoing blues shuffle that dominated his many songs in the 1970s, including hits like “After Midnight,” “Crazy Mama” and “Call Me the Breeze.” He sat out most of the 1980s, returning in 1989 with the more uptempo “Travel-Log” album, accompanied by the rock rhythm section of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Tim Drummond. The LP includes songs of wanderlust like “River Boat Song,” about a lover who entertained on the Mississippi River: “I know she’s getting near, river captain, bring my baby home, /I get so lonesome since she’s been gone, /She’s been down in Tupelo, working the river boat song…”

“Wooden Ships,” Jefferson Airplane, 1969

In early 1969, David Crosby wrote the music for this classic song, and compatriots Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner collaborated on the lyrics, which explain how survivors of nuclear war might escape radioactive fallout by sailing away on wooden ships. Crosby, Stills and Nash recorded it for their eponymous debut LP, and then Kantner’s band Jefferson Airplane recorded their version for their “Volunteers” LP a few months later. Both groups performed the song in their Woodstock sets that summer. While the CSN version is more familiar, I decided to feature the Airplane’s rendition here instead: “Wooden ships on the water very free and easy, /Easy, you know the way it’s supposed to be, /Silver people on the shoreline, let us be, /Talkin’ ’bout very free and easy…”

“Longer Boats,” Cat Stevens, 1970

In the wake of the 1969 moon landing, Stevens remembers a lot of talk about the possibility of UFOs visiting Earth, and that was on his mind when he wrote “Longer Boats,” one of the songs for “Tea For the Tillerman,” his 1970 LP. ”I was making a plea for human unity in the face of external threats, either extraterrestrial or hostile forces, like when the Vikings in their long boats invaded Britain,” he said: “They’re coming to win us, they’re coming to win us, /Longer boats are coming to win us, hold on to the shore, /They’ll be taking the key from the door…”

“The Crystal Ship,” The Doors, 1967

From The Doors’ phenomenal debut LP comes this rather dark song of mystery Jim Morrison wrote to his then-girlfriend, with whom he had just broken up. The “crystal ship,” according to most interpretations, is not a seagoing vessel but a metaphor for sleep or a drug-induced haze. Critics called it one of the band’s most underrated tracks, building from a gentle intro to a more full-bodied arrangement by the end, and one of Morrison’s finest vocal performances. The lyrics clearly reflect the pain of a breakup, yet with hope of reconciliation: “The days are bright and filled with pain, enclose me in your gentle rain, the time you ran was too insane, we’ll meet again, we’ll meet again…”

“Boats Against the Current,” Eric Carmen, 1977

Carmen was the spark plug behind Cleveland’s favorite sons The Raspberries in the early ’70s, after which he went solo and had two bigs hits in 1975-76 with the treacly “All By Myself” and The Beach Boys knockoff “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.” His sophomore LP in 1977 was problematic, taking four recording sessions to get the songs up to snuff, and still yielded only one minor hit, “She Did It.” The dramatic title track is a real standout, with philosophical lyrics about a changing relationship: “Tomorrow, we’re going to find what we’re after at last, feelings that we left in the past, /There’s romance in the sunset, we’re boats against the current to the end…” It was covered by the likes of Olivia Newton-John, Frankie Valli and Patti LaBelle, but as a single, Carmen’s original flopped at #88.

“Don’t Rock My Boat,” Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1970

Back in the late ’60s, when Marley was known only to fans of the then-new Jamaican reggae genre, The Wailers recorded several records that didn’t chart, including 1970’s “Soul Revolution Part II.” One track, “Don’t Rock My Boat,” was repackaged a few years later on their “African Herbsman” album in 1973, and then again in 1979 under a new title, “Satisfy My Soul,” when it reached #21 on UK charts as a single. The lyrics remind us that Marley prefers the calm, chill approach to life: “Oh, please don’t you rock my boat, /Because I don’t want my boat to be rocking, /I’m telling you that, oh woh, /I like it, I like it this, /So keep it steady, like this…”

“Slow Boat to China,” John Prine, 1984

“Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser wrote the pop standard “(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China” in 1948, which was covered by many artists in the years since. Perhaps inspired by that tune, Prine wrote his own wry song called “Slow Boat to China” in 1984, which shared the idea of enjoying the romantically leisurely pace of a very long boat ride halfway around the world: “Let’s take a slow boat to China, leave from South Carolina, /Let’s take our time and go the long way, /On a junk boat to Thailand with your hand in my hand, /I sure hope we got something to say, /Well, this old boat’s got no sail, so won’t you please hold our mail…”

“Ship of Fools,” Robert Plant, 1988

Critics raved about this subtle track from Plant’s fourth solo LP, 1988’s “Now and Zen.” For the former lead singer of the biggest blues-rock band of them all, “Ship of Fools” was quite a departure, a lovely ballad in which the narrator questioned his desire to set sail away from the safe harbor where his lover lives: “Beneath a lover’s moon I’m waiting, I am the pilot of the storm, /Adrift in pleasure I may drown, I built this ship, it is my making, /And furthermore, my self control I can’t rely on anymore, /Turn this boat around, back to my loving ground, /Crazy on a ship of fools…”

“River Boat,” Allen Toussaint, 2017

Best known as a New Orleans songwriter, arranger, producer and pianist, Toussaint’s songs reached their widest audience when performed by others, most notably Glen Campbell’s #1 version of “Southern Nights.” Toussaint didn’t consider himself a performer and recorded on his own only sporadically. The swampy groove of “River Boat,” which didn’t surface until it was included on a posthumous compilation album in 2017, drew on the images of the paddlewheelers near his New Orleans home: “Rain just keeps on pouring, love just keeps on growing, /Opportunity knocking, big boat just keeps a-rocking…. River boat keeps on chugging and we just keep right on hugging, /We’ve got love…”

“There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon For New York,” Louis Armstrong, 1957

George and Ira Gershwin wrote the music and lyrics for the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess,” which also became a Broadway musical and feature film. Armstrong joined forces with Ella Fitzgerald on several projects, including the jazzy material from “Porgy and Bess” in 1957, and Armstrong did a solo performance of “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon For New York,” the number in which Bess is wooed by her drug dealer to join her in sailing from Charleston to The Big Apple while Porgy is in jail: “Come along with me, dat’s de place, /Don’t be a fool, come along, come along, /There’s a boat dat’s leavin’ soon for New York, /Come with me, dat’s where we belong, sister…”

“Ships in the Night,” Be-Bop Deluxe, 1976

Combining elements of progressive rock, glam rock and traditional hard rock, England’s Be-Bop Deluxe never made much a splash in the US, but their five LPs between 1974 and 1978 were well received in the UK. Most notably, their 1976 album “Sunburst Finish” reached #17 there, thanks to the attention given to the single “Ships in the Night,” which peaked at #23. Its lyrics speak of the absence of love being like ships passing each other by: “Without love, I have no pleasures, /Without love, my light is dim, /Without love, I have no treasures, /Without love, my chance is slim, /Without love, we are like ships in the night, /Without love, selling our souls down the river…”

“Rock the Boat,” The Hues Corporation, 1974

Songwriter Waldo Holmes came up with this tune full of metaphors about how loving arms can provide shelter from the stormy ocean waves. It didn’t get much attention until New York discos started playing the original Hues Corporation track, sparking its remix to boost the bass and drums, which helped make “Rock the Boat” one of the first disco songs to reach #1 on the US pop charts in the summer of 1974: “Our love is like a ship on the ocean, we’ve been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion, /So I’d like to know where you got the notion, I said I’d like to know where you got the notion
to rock the boat (don’t rock the boat, baby), rock the boat (don’t tip the boat over)…”

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Honorable mentions:

“Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” James Taylor, 2020; ”Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” Peter, Paul & Mary, 1961; ”Boat on the Charles,” Told Rundgren, 1971; ”Ships,” Big Country, 1991; ”Last Boat Leaving,” Elvis Costello, 1989; ”On a Slow Boat to China,” Willie Nelson, 2009; ”Boat on the River,” Styx, 1979; ”The Boat That I Row,” Neil Diamond, 1966; ”Ships,” Ian Hunter, 1979; ”Six Months on a Leaky Boat,” Split Enz, 1982; ”Ships Passing Through the Night,” Jimi Hendrix, 2010.

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