Absolutely historic concerts - as M. Winner might opine. And the famed 'wall of sound' was astonishing. But there was that special event in the evening when the sound guy left a CD of Johnny singing a sea shanty and the whole audience started singing along with him. Priceless.

Whilst there was many memories of Johnny singing shanties etc., there was not a lot of remembrances of him at tall ship festivals.

So I'll relate one of my enduring memories.

In 2004 we were sailing on the Norwegian full-rigged ship Christian Radich from Oslo to Brest 2004 Tall Ship Festival. We had a storm in the North Sea but this calmed down and for most of the passage down the English Channel we had calm seas and following winds. So we sunned ourselves on the deck and retired to our hammocks and bunks for our last night on board - leaving all of the sails flapping in the wind. Silly. At 2.00 am it was all 'hands on deck' - we got hit by a force 11 storm at the mouth of the Channel with 30ft. Atlantic rollers coming in at an angle. But we were in a 'safe' ship and the permanent crew climbed aloft and got the sails in, whilst everyone else tied anything and everything down with rope (actually using the safety climbing harnesses).

Now I tell you all this because Johny and a small company of sailors / singers were also out in that storm. But their ship was not quite as 'safe' - in fact it had sprung a leak!! You might know the ship from the Hornblower films. Not the large Grand Turk ship - no - Johnny was on the little one - the Julia. It has a mainly open deck and they must have been swamped in the huge waves of the storm.

Anyway both ships (generic term) arrived in Brest OK.

And the next day wondering around the dockside we came upon the Julia - and who was there but Johnny Collins holding fort on the deck. It was low tide so we were peering down at him. He looked up and he immediately recognised us ex-Reading Cloggies because the 'Singing Chef' with Joyce and Bob used to do the catering for our Annual Festival. We'd not seen him since the Festivals folded yet he still recognised us. No problem. He immediately invited us on board for a look around and a drink where we stayed for quite a few increasingly happy hours. And I think that the ship was still leaking at the time!! And that was the last time we saw him. My real regret is that we never asked him to sing at our Festivals - but every year he did provide great food for all of the cloggies.

But I now have one of Johnny's Sea Shanty CDs from the weekend which I shall certainly play on our next tall ship voyage on Tenacious in a few weeks. And whilst on the duty night watch at 2.00 in the morning I shall look up and imagine that one of the millions of stars up there is Johnny himself making sure that we really do have calm seas and following winds.