Last nights episode of Ade at Sea had a small piece on shanties which featured Hughie Jones


Series in which Adrian Edmondson explores Britain's maritime past and its influence today. In the early 19th century, 40 per cent of the world's trade passed through Liverpool, and its port was the busiest and most advanced on Earth. Ade begins his journey at Eastham, where the Manchester Ship Canal meets the River Mersey. The canal was a feat of engineering which transformed previously landlocked Manchester into the third busiest port in Britain. He meets three generations of a family who work on the tugboats and joins them as they haul a 3,000-ton vessel along the waterway. Back in Liverpool, Ade boards a three-masted topsail schooner, the Kathleen and May, a type which used to ply the Atlantic and learns about sea shanties from Scouser Hughie Jones. Off the north-west coast, massive wind farms are under construction and Ade visits one of the largest in the world, Gwynt Y Mor.

It is available to watch on the ITV player (but probably not available to those of you outside the UK)

Ade at Sea