Fisherman’s Friends Net Catchy Album Deal
March 19, 2010
Last July, we posted a video of the Fisherman’s Friends singing the chantey ‘South Australia.’ The group is made up of ten crab and lobster fishermen and their friends who live within half a nautical mile of each other in fishing village of Port Isaac in Cornwall. They have recently signed an album [...]
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Barry Finn Memorial Chantey Blast / Pub Sing at Mystic Seaport
January 4, 2010
This Saturday, January 9th from 1-5 p.m. there will be a Chantey Blast / Pub Sing in memory of Barry Finn, the New England shanty singer who died last October at age 58. The memorial will be held at Frohsinn Hall,54 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT, directly across from the Seaport entrance. It will be [...]
Read MoreTom Lewis Singing Stevenson’s “Christmas at Sea”
December 25, 2009
Tom Lewis singing Robert Lewis Stevenson’s “Christmas at Sea.”
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Read MoreA Shanty for Friday Afternoon – the Hardtackers sing Rio Grand
December 11, 2009
A shanty the way a shanty should be sung – seven strong voices singing out with a will.
Here are the Hardtackers, the official shanty crew for the replica of the Columbus’ Santa Maria, fittingly enough in Columbus, Ohio at the confluence of the mighty Scioto and Olentangy rivers.
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Read MoreRogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys
November 26, 2009
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. The story goes that Johnny Depp, fresh from playing Captain Jack Sparrow in the highly popular if extremely uneven “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies decided to get his rock star friends together to make a CD of pirate songs and sea chanties. What [...]
Read MoreStan Hugill – The Last Shantyman
November 19, 2009
Stan Hugill, who was born today in 1906 and died in 1992, is often referred as the “last working shantyman.” He was the shantyman aboard the Jubilee-rigged, lime-juice Cape Horner, Garthpool, the last British commercial sailing ship, which wrecked off the Cape Verde Islands in 1929. Click here to here Stan’s account of the sinking [...]
Read MoreThe Leaving of Liverpool
September 29, 2009
“The Leaving of Liverpool” is a wonderful sea song, capturing both the promise of a new voyage and the sadness of leaving loved ones behind. It was “collected” by William Main Doerflinger in 1951 from Dick Maitland, an old sailor at New York’s Snug Harbor, who while bosun on the General Knox around 1885, had learned it one night [...]
Read MoreWe’re Bound for South Australia
July 24, 2009
I first heard this capstain shanty over thirty years ago while sitting on a rotting dock in New York’s East River at the weekly shanty sing featuring Bernie Klay and the ex-Seamen’s Institute. The Moshulu, one of the last of the iron windjammers, was tied alongside the peir, and from my perspective, her masts seemed to tower over [...]
Read MoreStan Rogers – An Appreciation
June 26, 2009
Yesterday we posted about Nova Scotia’s Summer Festivals including the Stan Rogers Folk Festival on July 3-5 in Canso on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore. Stan Rogers wasn’t only singer and writer of sea songs. His range of interests was far broader. Nevertheless, many of his songs about the sea have become classics.
Stan Rogers was a Canadian folk singer who [...]
Mingulay Boat Song – A Tribute to a Lost Way of Life
June 20, 2009
The Mingulay Boat Song is a wonderful sea song - great to sing and not difficult to play. The Crimson Pirates recently performed the song on the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge in Hoboken, where I will admit to singing along.
It is a song sung by Scottish fishermen as they returned from the Atlantic toward their home on the Isle [...]
The Crimson Pirates on the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge
June 1, 2009
Last Saturday, fellow bloggers Christina, Will, and Elizabeth and I listened to the rollicking sea tunes of the Crimson Pirates on the Lehigh Valley Railroad Barge No. 79, the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge, alongside the old Lackawanna Terminal on the Hudson River in Hoboken, NJ. A good time was had by all.
Update: Will has posted some [...]
The Queen of the Grand Banks Schooners
May 25, 2009
I happened upon this amazing video – rare footage of the Canadian fishing schooner Bluenose from Nova Scotia, racing against the Gertrude L. Thibault of Gloucester, set to Stan Roger’s song, Bluenose. Definitely worth a look and listen.
The Bluenose lives on in her replica, Bluenose II, as well as appearing on the Canadian dime, Nova Scotia license plates [...]
The Bonnie Ship the Diamond
February 28, 2009
As sea songs go, “The Bonny Ship the Diamond” has broken into the mainstream. A song of “joyous farewell” about a whaling ship leaving the Scottish port of Peterhead to go “fishing for the whale” off the icy shores of Greenland, it was popularized by the Scottish folk group, the Corries, and then picked up by Judy [...]
Read MoreRoll Alabama, Roll – the Wreck of the CSS Alabama
February 26, 2009
One of the great sea songs to come out of the American Civil War is Roll Alabama, Roll about the construction, the exploits and the ultimate sinking of the commerce raider, CSS Alabama.
Here is one version of the tune sung by the 97th Regimental String Band.
The CSS Alabama was sunk by the USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg, France [...]
Fiddler’s Green
December 6, 2008
Stan Rogers, the late Canadian folk sing/songwriter, sang a song about an ill fated privateering voyage during the American revolution called “Barrett’s Privateer’s“. He was often asked where he learned the song. Most assumed that it was a traditional folk song. Many of the references and details are accurate and appropriate to the period. Nevertheless, [...]
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