Maritime songs wanted please Hull area

Subject: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:29 AM

I would welcome information on any songs of "any style" that is about the maritime history of Hull and the surrounding area.

This is for a project that will involve young people in Music ~ Singing ~ Filming ~ Interviewing ~ Laughing and much more…

The project is Humbersound Groove Crew and funded by Heritage Lottery Young Routes. This project will investigate the musical heritage that links Hull to the sea and the cultural heritage that surrounds the city. An education package will be developed to deliver to a wider audience for future years. The young team Heritage Groove Crew will be researching into local maritime history and heritage by interviewing people and capturing their memories and stories with sound and film recording. They will also be performing at the Hull Maritime Festival (Shanty Festival) as last year.

Just to let you know I am aware and have a copy of Hissyfits CD's – Thanks Linda!!   

Many thanks in advance

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: IanC
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:34 AM

Three Score and Ten is from Grimsby.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: IanC
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 11:40 AM

This thread also has some info.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 12:04 PM

I have written a couple of songs about whaling in Hull (several of my forebears were Hull whalers). Apart from Beggars' Litany, which is my take on the Hull, Hell and Halifax couplet, I haven't recorded them yet but I would be happy to send you the lyrics if you care to PM me. You can hear a rather poor recording of Beggars' Litany at
http://www.myspace.com/whipstafffolk
If I can help with the project in any way, I would be pleased to do so.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Rasener
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 12:12 PM

How about asking Shanty Jack or John Conolly, even though they live on the other side of the water, they surely would be able to help.
Les

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Les from Hull
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 12:15 PM

Here's The wreck of the Industry
from the Yorkshire Garland site (sung by Steve Gardham). Just what you want.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: SINSULL
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 12:19 PM

Check out Hissyfit's website. The Luckiest Sailor is a true story. Sweet Minerva is a pub in Hull, I think.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: ossonflags
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 01:43 PM

Give us a bell Dave I will give you any help I can.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 02:16 PM

I'd have thought the Yorkshire Garland people ought to be contacted.

http://www.yorkshirefolksong.net/

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Willa
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 04:12 PM

Ewan McColl and Frankie Armstrong's Lament for the Hull Trawlers - about the triple trawler tragedy.
Harry Eddom - about the sole survivor from the three trawlers.
Have words/tunes for both if you need them.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 04:27 PM

Mike Waterson - 3 day Millionaire?

Kitty

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Apr 09 - 07:13 PM

There are no traditional songs connecting Hull by name with the sea. However plenty have been written relatively recently as the above show. There are also songs with vague connections such as the various Grace Darling songs. (The Forfarshire had sailed from Hull). The Paul Jones attack off Flamborough has plenty of attached songs and some of the relics are to be seen in Wilberforce House. There's a few old whaling songs, just words, in some of the museum records, but no evidence that any of them came from oral tradition. Bert Lloyd cobbled a Hull verse into his version of the shanty 'Heave away me Johnny'. You'd get a few giggles from the kids if you tried to teach them this.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 06:33 AM

Many thanks for all your suggestions and offers of help I will contact you for further information.

Please add any new suggestion you may think of, all very welcome.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 08:28 AM

Thanks Les, Shanty Jack already "on board" with the project!!

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Crane Driver
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 09:46 AM

A few years ago I was asked to write a song about Lilian (Big Lil) Bilocca, a fisherman's wife from Hull who campaigned for improved safety aboard trawlers in the 1960s. The song, Big Lil, was recorded on our CD 'Characters'. The words are on our website Crane Drivin' Music - I can send you an mp3 of the tune if you'd like - PM me.

Andrew McKay

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: GUEST,John Conolly
Date: 11 Apr 09 - 10:02 AM

Don't forget Keith Marsden's great song "Hessle Road" !

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 04:28 AM

Many thanks again and up you go..

Subject: Lyr Add: OLE FAITHFUL / OLD FAITHFUL
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 11:28 AM

There is a song we collected in Fleetwood, but I feel it is a 'Hull' song as the tune is 'Old Faithful'.....
    O Dinas, we sailed the seas together
    O Dinas in any kind of weather
    When your trawling days are over
    Then we can live in clover
    Due to you old faithful pal of mine

    Get along old fella, for the cod sets in tonight
    Get along old fella, for the hake is there all right
    The bos'un's chacing the crew around
    Another good haul and we're homeward bound
    On you old faithful pal of mine.

   Dinas Steam Trawlers Ltd was owned by a branch of the Marr
   family, & eventually merged with 'marrs'. There were several
   trawlers called 'Dinas', some of the early ones based in Hull,
   the last one was a Fleetwood vessel.    Sailor Ron

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 05:27 PM

Hi Ron,
Hmmm, interesting. Very tentative Hull connection as it stands. Although 'Ole Faithful' was adopted as the anthem of Hull FC it was a well-known country number of 1934 and well -loved all over the country. Do you know if there was much interchange between west coast and east coast fishermen? I know some of the deck hands on Hull trawlers came from many parts of the country. If pushed I'd say if it was collected in Fleetwood and a 'Dinas' sailed out of Fleetwood then that was the most likely candidate.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Les from Hull
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 06:04 PM

Dinas, although registered in Fleetwood (FD55) and had Fleetwood owners, perhaps did fish out of Hull. There's a picture here. An earlier Fleetwood Dinas of 1909 was wrecked in 1936. She was originally a Milford boat, and moved to Fleetwood after minesweeping duties in the Great War. Presumably the Dinas Steam Trawling Company (General Manager Joseph A Marr) was named for her.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 03:34 AM

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 03:47 AM

Steve, you may be right, I presumed it came from Hull orininaly because of the tune. About 'cross overs' twix Fleetwood & Hull, trawler companies certainly did [Marrs for instance], and trawlers frequently were transfered or sold between the ports. As for crews, well here in Fleetwood we had lots of folk from Lowestoft arrive between the wars, and quite a few from Grimsby, from Hull? Not a lot [to my knowledge]. On the otherhand deep sea trawling from Hull differed very little from deep sea trawling from Fleetwood, so any songs, not specific to either port, would/could refer to the 'trade' in general.   Ron

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 06:01 AM

In the BBC tv film 'Land of Green Ginger' by Alan Plater, the soundtrack is by the Watersons with sequences of them performing. One of the songs which is sung by Mike Waterson over scenes of a trawler returning to St. Andrew's Dock. I think the title was 'Homeward Bound' and I presume it was specially written by Mike for the film as I don't recall hearing it anywhere else.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Willa
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 11:38 AM

My grandfather had been a trawlerman for fifty years, sailing out of Hull. His last trip was out of Fleetwood as skipper of the Lady Love. Torpedoed and sunk with all hands.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Les from Hull
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 11:51 AM

Willa's grandad's trawler

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Willa
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 01:20 PM

Thanks, Les. I do have a copy of the photo.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 03:03 PM

buspassed,
I'll ask Mike next time I see him. Bert Lloyd adapted the following verse for his version of 'Heave away me Johnnies'

Fare ye well ye Kingston (spit) girls,
Farewell St Andrews Dock, heave etc.
Whenever we return again we'll make yer cradles rock, heave etc.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: GUEST,Pauline Taylor
Date: 30 Apr 09 - 11:30 AM

My name was Pauline Fletcher before marriage. Would like to be in touch over Lady Love. My E-Mail [e-mail].

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Charley Noble
Date: 01 May 09 - 08:37 AM

I seem to remember that the sailing barge voyage described by Bob Roberts in "Waiting for the Day" ends up in Hull:

Into the Humber, up to town,
Pump, you bastards, pump or drown!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 May 09 - 09:03 AM

Try the broadside I posted in this thread:

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=92290

Topical number to do in the middle of an epidemic.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 May 09 - 08:02 PM

Charley,
If I remember rightly. (I've got Bob's EP somewhere) it was a Collier Brigg and it went right past Hull to get a cargo of coal at Keadby on the Trent. Unfortunately the bottom was rotten and it came down the chute and went right through her bottom! The collier briggs mostly were loaded at Goole right upto 1986 when the trade stopped, but Keadby had a hoist too.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 May 09 - 08:04 PM

Steve-

Thanks for finally clarifying what a "Keadby crew" is. I've always wondered. The song is also known as "The Worst Old Ship" as well as "The Collier Brig."

But where was the Druid's Arms, in "Waitin' for the Day When We Get Our Pay"??

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 03 May 09 - 01:50 PM

Druid's Arms.
I'll ask my brother-in-law who's working on a keel at Keadby Lock at the moment. He knows all the old boys round there. I'll see him on his own keel tomorrow. My father-in-law also sailed on keels from Keadby in the late 40s and he might know. I sometimes sing an adapted version about the coal being shot at Goole and then I sing 'Wheatsheaf Arms' which was where most of the keelmen and tugmen drank, near one of the hoists.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 04 May 09 - 08:08 AM

This is all really interesting, I love to find out about local maritime history, keep up the good work Dave.

Subject: RE: Maritime songs wanted please Hull area
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 04 May 09 - 02:50 PM

Asked all the people at Yorkshire Waterways Museum and a couple said they'd heard of the Druid's Arms at Keadby, not far from the 'Friendship' near the lock, but no definite placing. There was a chap from Keadby at the museum today but I missed him as I was taking a trip round the docks on Wheldale. Father in law Goff said he'd ask around.