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This song, written by Pappalardi/Collins, is about the experience of being towed along in a small boat by a harpooned whale (Nantucket Sleighride being the term used by Nantucket whalers) The person to whom the song is dedicated, Owen Coffin, was a young seaman on the Nantucket whaleship Essex, which was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. After being adrift for some months, the near-starved survivors, during January 1821, began to eat the bodies of those who died. When even this resource ran out, the four men remaining in Pollard's boat agreed to draw straws to decide which of them should be slaughtered, lest all four die of starvation. Coffin 'lost' the lottery, and was shot and eaten..
According to the Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin) Songfacts, in Britain, "Nantucket Sleighride" was used as the theme music (instrumental only) for the political/current affairs TV programme Weekend World.
it also features (respectively) on love child timeless cd album although not originally on the eighties record replaced child in time on the recently mastered cd version as a bonus track
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