Chords for Mark Knopfler - about Jeremiah Dixon, Sailing to Philadelphia,

Few of us ever get to leave our mark upon the world.
But two and a half centuries ago, a county Durham surveyor did just that.
The Mason-Dixon line later came to symbolise America's deep divisions over slavery.
Yet the two [A] men whose scientific genius led to that epic [E] boundaries creation have faded into history.
[N] But North East music legend Mark Knopfler has always believed a local hero [F#m] is worth singing about.
I _ _ _ [F#] was very taken by the story of these two guys.
One from my neck of the woods in North East England, [A] the other from the West Country. _
[F#m] _ _ To this day they're famous in the [E] States, but here at home I think few people have ever heard of them.
_ [F#m] I'm Jeremiah Dixon, _ I am a Geordie boy.
Glass of wine with you sir, and the [D] ladies I'll enjoy.
_ [E] All Durham men are [D] _ thumblin', [E] special by my [D] own hand.
_ _ [A] It was my [D] fate from birth to make my mark [E] upon the earth. _ _
_ _ _ _ So why would I write a song about an astronomer and a surveyor who two and a half centuries ago
cut a line through a great [A] stretch of American wilderness?
[D] Their humble origins didn't stop them from pushing science to its limits.
[D] And I'm not the only one who sings their praises.
[A] _ [D] _ _
It's been [E] 26 years I've been out looking for the stones.
[D] Last time I was at this stone was 1991.
The stones are placed every mile along the line.
They're intended to mark the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland,
which at that time was the Penn and the Calvert families.
So this stone that we're at is a milestone.
It has an M on one side and a P on the other for Pennsylvania to [C#m] designate Maryland, Pennsylvania.
There's about 230 miles of line that was surveyed by Mason and Dixon.
Well, [F#] the idea of trying to survey a straight line over this type of terrain,
the mountains and hills, when not following a natural course like a water boundary
or a stream or a ridge line, who in their right mind would do that?
But night after night they would be observing the stars
and for upwards of two to three weeks.
And then they would spend the days doing the calculations in order to determine their latitude of one [E] point.
So what took them two or three weeks we can do in two to three seconds.
It's [F#m] pretty incredible.
_ Warfare broke out frequently along [E] the borders between the colonists
and about 4000 square miles of territory were in dispute.
And the problem was nobody knew who to pay their taxes to.
So in 1760, Mason Dixon were commissioned to solve the problem.
This is a very unusual map, perhaps the most unusual you're ever going to see.
It is the legendary Mason Dixon survey.
It was at least 100 years ahead of its time and the equivalent of the moon landing today.
It was the finest minds of the age, the finest astronomers of the age
and the finest technology of the age.
And having an accuracy that continues to astound even to this day.
[F#m] I'm Jeremiah Dixon.
I am a Geordie boy.
[F#] Jeremiah Dixon was my great great great great [D] great uncle.
A man of [F#] Cockfield.
He lived here as a young man.
He was talented as a young boy, as a mathematician [A] and developed that into surveying.
He [G] was a bit of a lad and he enjoyed socialising, carousing
and he was actually put out of the Quakers in [F#m] September 1760
for drinking to excess and keeping loose company.
_ _ _ _ [A] _ [D] _
A lively lad I [E] think.
Old Durham and [D] Northumberland.
He went down to London [A] and was [D] taken on by the Royal Society to do an [E] international trip.
_ _ [D] So Keith, we have a Durham mining [E]
community lad, we have a Baker's boy from Gloucestershire.
What brought them together?
Jeremiah Dixon is [G] recruited by Charles Mason, who's a fellow of the Royal Society
[E] to help observe the transit of Venus.
[F#m] He calls me Charlie Mason, _ _ stargazer of [F#] mine.
In the 1760s these observations [A] were key to a very [D] particular scientific question.
The distance between the Earth and the Sun.
[A] So here [E] you can see Mason and Dixon's expenses.
Timber for the [F] observatory, canvas to put over the instruments here
and if you go right to the bottom you [G] can see for wine.
71 pounds.
These northern boys can certainly put it away.
Absolutely.
Jeremiah Dixon had form [C] in this area when he was a young man of course.
So it couldn't have come as any surprise to [E] anyone.
_ [C#m] Sailing to [F#m] Philadelphia [D] _ [F#m] to _ [D] draw the [E] line, _ _ [D] the [E] Mason [A]-Dixon line.
_ _ After a long dispute it was finally settled that the line should run 15 miles south
of the southernmost point of Philadelphia.
Mason and Dixon were hired to do the job.
_ [F#m] _ _ _
_ As simple as it sounds, drawing [E] a line through uncharted territory was a mammoth task.
[F#m] You're a good surveyor Dixon, but I swear you make me mad.
The west will kill us both, [A] you gullible Geordie lad.
[D] _ [E] This was the wilderness.
Steep ravines [D] and hills and mountains and rattlesnakes and bears
[E] required axmen to cut down the trees.
They [A] had packing oil drivers who would drag the trees off.
They had a shepherd who took the [D] sheep with him for food.
A milkmaid, tent bearers.
It was upwards of 115 [E] people.
It was like a small army working through the woods. _ _ _
Well we actually [F#m] know a lot about the line because Charles Mason kept some extensive [E] records.
Mason says the observatory taken down and put with the rest of the instruments in three wagons
except the telescope which was carried [F] on the springs with feather bed underneath it.
[N] They had to be careful with that telescope.
It was only a few decades later that the line took on a whole new national significance
and would earn a place in America's conscience.
_ This line became much more than just demarcation of boundaries.
It became a sort of symbolic marker between the south and the north.
Slavery in the south grew and expanded.
The very exact opposite was happening in the north.
So northerners had begun to gradually end slavery.
Pennsylvania being really one of the first to do that.
So Dixon would have approved of this [F] new meaning behind this [D] line.
The story that's passed down suggests that [N] he actually prevented the assault of a black woman
who was enslaved by her owner.
That he [F#m] took the slave whip away from the owner and [G] refused to allow [D] the abuse to continue.
[E] Talk of [D] liberty, _ _ how can [A] America [D] be free?
_ _ [E] Geordie and a [D] baker's boy in the forests of the [E] Iroquois. _ _
In the American Civil War the line epitomized the split between [F#] north and south. _
Mason Dixon were famous a century after they themselves had [A] faded into obscurity.
[D] Well, Jerry Meyer ended [E] up as a local County Durham surveyor.
[D] The reason we're here is that he's buried somewhere here, [E] but we don't know where.
And the [D] reason was that the gravestones were unmarked, which was the Quaker fashion in the 18th century.
[Gm] Having _ [E]
spent his life earning his living putting marker stones down and surveying,
then his own life was unmarked, as was Charles [C#] Mason's.
_ _ [F#] _ [A] _
There are no true portraits or images or gravestones for Mason and Dixon.
So in my own way I'm [F#m] glad to have tried to keep them alive in a song.
_ _ [E] A County Durham lad and a West Country baker's boy,
whose incredible achievements mean that they really should be remembered as local heroes. _ _ _ _
_ And a huge thanks to Mark for telling [A#] that remarkable story and performing that song specially for us.
[Dm] But that's it for tonight.
_ _ [N] _ _