As I'm typing this, I'm looking at a Stan Hugill painting few have ever seen, which used to belong to Bernie Klay and now hangs in my study:

http://www.bullough.org/yankee_whalers.jpg

I first met Stan at the 11th Mystic Sea Music Festival where the organizers were generous enough to invite three of us chanteyfolk to be their guests. At the first concert, I was at the back of the tent, feeling rather overwhelmed by it all. (A common state of first-timers at this event, and one that can be re-captured by observing the rapture of other first-timers.)

As I stood there, Stan strode up and introduced himself, "Hello, my name is Stan Hugill, you're Greg Bullough from San Francisco, aren't you?"

If I'd not been sufficiently overwhelmed by the whole thing, the sudden feeling that THE Stan Hugill had just sought me out, knew my name, and introduced himself to me sent me right over the top.

I allowed as he'd got the reckoning right, and he went on to say "Well, where's that little brown girl you brought with you?"

He was referring to Celeste Bernardo, then the chantey-singing ranger at San Francisco Maritime NHP, and one of my traveling companions. (She's now the superintendent at New Bedford Whaling NHP, and has herself made quite a mark in the world of maritime music.) There were some logistics to be sorted out regarding Stan's upcoming visit to San Francisco, but there was no question that he was far more eager to conduct those discussions with a "little brown girl" than he would elsewise have been.

A bit later, I was skulking around the back of the tent, and it was a tent back then, with an illicit bottle of Heineken in hand. No drinking was permitted in public areas of the Seaport back then. Stan stepped up and said, "Let us have a bit of that to lubricate me larynx before I go on, will you?" With that he demonstrated that "a bit" for him consisted of upending the bottle and making like the world's tallest water-cooler. He swallowed the lot in a couple of seconds, said "Thanks" and went off to do his set.

A while later, he approached me with the opposite problem. "Can you tell me where's the gents?" I directed him around the end of the shed and to the Youth Training Building which to this day serves as a sort of green room and watering-hole for performers and staff. He got this mischievous look in his eye and said "I'll make it about half-way."

Stan stepped over to where the schooner Brilliant was docked and had a piss on the pristine topsides of Briggs Cunningham's classic.

Over the next few years I had occasion to provide local hospitality both in Mystic and in San Francisco for Stan and his dear Bron. I treasure the memories of those times when I had the grand old man just about all to myself and find that even as I write this, I miss him terribly.

For all the silly stories we may tell about his quirks, he was the consumate scholar, a constant and patient teacher, and seemed to have an unlimited capacity for changing acquiantance into friendship.