‘Rise Again’: What Stan Rogers’s Greatest Song Teaches Us About Hope
A ship sinks, lives are shattered, yet a crew chooses to fight back. Stan Rogers’s ‘The Mary Ellen Carter’ offers a realistic, powerful anthem for rising again.
The gap between misery and human weakness on one hand, and our limited strength to pursue happiness on the other, is daunting. We need encouragement, often found in stories, to bridge this divide. The great Canadian musician Stan Rogers offers a powerful example of both the dilemma and its resolution in his song “The Mary Ellen Carter.”
Its strength lies in its unembellished honesty: It distinguishes between human frailty and the spirit’s aspirations, yet celebrates the triumph of both over the hardships that nearly destroy them.
The Story
From its opening line, the song strikes a jarring note: “She went down last October,” confronting the audience with the loss of the ship “Mary Ellen Carter.” The wreck was caused by a drunken captain, despite the crew risking their lives to save it after it struck the rocks. The ship’s owners aimed to collect insurance, leaving the crew without work. Rather than abandon the ship, the men chose to salvage it and spent months in difficult and dangerous work to prepare her for recovery.
Paul Prezzia received his M.A. in History from the University of Notre Dame in 2012. He now serves as business manager, athletics coach, and Latin teacher at Gregory the Great Academy, and lives in Elmhurst Township, Penn., with his wife and children.
