Well, huh. "Wooden Ships" was written aboard...a wooden ship.

After he had been tossed out of the Byrds, David Crosby took the cash settlement he got from the band and bought himself a 70 foot sailing boat. And since he now had a lot of free time on his hands, he took that boat and sailed it all over the world. Sometimes his musician friends would join him.


Paul Kantner, who was in Jefferson Airplane back in those days, recalled writing a song with Crosby while he was on board. Paul said, “David had had this piece of music for about a year or two that he hadn't written lyrics to. I knew how fond David was of the ocean. So I just put [this line to it]: ‘wooden ships on the water, very free and easy,’ and that charmed David to no end.”

Kantner ended up writing two verses for the song. Stephen Stills, who was sailing with them, wrote a verse, too. And David Crosby said he “wrote the bits at both ends.” Such as the opening lines. Crosby got that from a church sign he’d seen in Florida.

“If you smile at me, I will understand.

'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.”

It was a good place to start for a song about the apocalypse: a statement of connection, a statement of hope.

. . . .

Don’t let the cover photo from the album CSN throw you. That ship that the trio are lounging on is the one Crosby bought for himself back in the ‘60s.