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Question: I Am Trying To Find The Words To A Poem!?
I think it was called Blue Peter or something similar & I can't remember who wrote it, but it described all these boats in the bay!.
It started something about '-----------------boats, come steaming down the bay!.
And rub their painted shoulders with the tramp from Mandalay'!.

Do you know this poem!? I learned it at school in the 50s!.Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Here's the deal:

As this entry from Google Books shows, the name of the poem is either "Blue Peter" or "Blue Petee" -- and it's cited from a collection called "The Wide Brown Land" -- which was a school collection of Australian poetry!.

The lines you're remembering run like this:

The white and scarlet ferry boats
Come creaming down the bay,
And rub their painted shoulders
With the tramp from Mandalay,
And the liner bound

And if you search for that first phrase ("white and scarlet ferry boats"), you get this link:
http://oldpoetry!.com/column/show/53

to this poem:

The Australian poet Joyce Owen Starr apparently felt the same thing, describing in the poem “Blue Peter” passing the busy Sydney docks in a ferry-boat:

Blue Peter (Joyce Owen Starr)

The white and scarlet ferry boats
Come creaming down the bay,
And rub their painted shoulders
With the tramp from Mandalay,
And the liner bound for 'Frisco,
And the gay-flagged Betsy B!.,
And the tub from Porto Rico,
And the barque from Barbary …

My heart puts out to sea …

There are apples in my cargo,
And the holds are flowing full
Of frozen meat, and yellow wheat
And piling bales of wool!.
I'll bring back fretted ivory,
And laces sheer and fine,
And figs and dates and muscatels
From teeming Palestine
And pearly rice
And fragrant spice
And casks of amber wine!.

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tadaa!Www@QuestionHome@Com