I love sea shanties and songs of the sea. When I was small one of the songs that my Grandfather taught us was Down by The Royal Albion (or Streets of Laredo to others, although it would be years before I heard that version) Other than that song, he never talked much about his life as an orphan ward of the the British Navy or his time as a merchant seaman shipping out of San Francisco before the earthquake, but he was a member of the Thermopolae Club, so we knew he had sailed under canvas, as that was a requirement for membership at one time.

Years after his death, we were invited aboard one of the Tall Ships one evening, during a boat festival here in Victoria Harbour and ended up in the galley/lounge singing sea songs and shanties. The ship (I wish I could remember the name) was not one of the spit and polished ones, but had been a lumber transporter on the West Coast and little had been changed below deck, on this true worker, in the last 100 years. It had two, huge smoke blackened beams that ran 110 feet through the length and we sang, nestled in the glow of kerosene lanterns, as the kettle boiled on the old woodstove.

It was one of those chicken skin evenings, where you felt truly transported to another time and I felt a wonderful tangible connection to the missing portions of my concertina playing/banjo picking Grandfather's life again and remembered the evenings as a child, when we sat around him in the glow of the fireplace entranced by his songs.

Then there's the Scot and Hungarian side of the family and they sang too.