Wooden Ships
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"Wooden Ships"

"Wooden Ships" is a rock song written and composed by David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner (of Jefferson Airplane) in the late 1960s. The song was written and composed in Florida on Crosby's boat. Crosby composed the music, and Stills and Kantner wrote most of the lyrics.[1]
Contents
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1 Background
1.1 Timing
1.2 Interpretations
2 Notes

[edit] Background

Paul Kantner could not be officially credited as one of the joint authors-composers of "Wooden Ships" on the original release of Crosby, Stills & Nash due to legal issues, but he is thus officially credited on the 2006 re-release. The song was also released by Jefferson Airplane the same year on the album Volunteers. Both versions are considered to be original versions of the song, although they differ slightly in wording and melody.

Crosby recorded a solo demo in March 1968 with the melody but no lyrics. Stills recorded his own demo the following month with most of the lyrics in place.
[edit] Timing

"Wooden Ships" was written at the height of the Vietnam War, a time of great tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear-armed rivals in the Cold War.
[edit] Interpretations

Like Tom Lehrer's "We Will All Go Together When We Go" and Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," the song seems to deal with ever-present fears of an apocalyptic nuclear war.[citation needed] In this interpretation, the words of the song depict the horrors confronting the survivors of a nuclear holocaust in which the two sides have annihilated each other. A man from one side stumbles upon a man from the other side and asks him, "Can you tell me, please, who won?" Since the question has no real meaning in the circumstances (or even at all), it is left unanswered. To stay alive, they share purple berries that have presumably not been poisoned by radiation. The lyrics beg "silver people on the shoreline" to "let us be"; these are commonly held to be men wearing radiation suits.[citation needed] As wooden ships are carrying the survivors away, radiation poisoning kills those who have not made it aboard:[citation needed]

Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die

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