'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Sugwash
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 02:04 PM

Thanks Charley and Kathy. YouTube is the only place I've recorded the song as yet, and that was only to pass the tune on to a friend.

It was based on the tall tales of two American seamen I met in a dockside bar in Toulon. They were both in their sixties had some great yarns to tell. They spent the evening trying to out do each other with ever more improbable situations they'd been in. And they didn't actually use the word 'courted', but needs must in polite society, so I altered that. The song was was also informed by my time in the Royal Navy's submarine service; happy daze.

Cheers

Andy

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Crane Driver
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 09:12 AM

Thanks for including me in this illustrious list

Words of many of my songs are available on our website Crane Drivin' Music

I'm always happy for people to sing my songs

Andrew "Crane Driver" McKay

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: KathyW
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 01:04 AM

Charley: you can find Sugwash's song on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvjRPghID9E (pops)

Good song!

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 10:00 PM

Sugwash-

Wow! Where was that recorded?

Charley Noble

Subject: Lyr Add: GIRLS OF EVERY COLOUR (Andy Sugden)
From: Sugwash
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 06:50 PM

Girls of Every Colour                                        © Andy Sugden 2006

I was just a lad of fifteen years.
Destined for the mine,
But I couldn't stand that gloomy place
I like the sun to shine.
So I ran away, hitched to Hull,
Signed on the Empire Line.
I've been on that journey neigh on sixty years.

First run ashore, Lisbon town,
A lady of the night.
She took away my innocence
Then robbed me out of sight.
The other sailors laughed and howled
And said it served me right,
"But cheer up lad it'll stand you in good stead."

Chorus:

I've courted girls of every colour
In every distant land.
I've seen sights to make your eyes stare,
Let fortune slip my hand.
I've played mandolin and fiddle
In a roving gypsy band
I never had the urge to settle down.

Amelie in Toulon;
I was smitten from the start.
She got right underneath my skin
And wrapped around my heart.
She swore that she loved only me,
I adored her for my part.
She dumped me when the Yankee fleet came in.

For the love of a girl in Naples
I got put away for fourteen days.
Her papa said I "Was no good,
Beware a sailor's ways."
He was a man of great influence,
And influence always pays.
When they let me out, I still stole that girl away.

I've been chased by a jealous knifeman
Through the back streets of Rome,
Near froze on a Swedish balcony
When a husband, he came home.
Tried to shin over a harem wall
Behind a blue mosque's dome.
I've serenaded senoritas in Santiago.

I've been love struck by a geisha girl
In Tanobe, south Japan,
Had my eye blacked by a princess
In regal Rajasthan
And spent a fortune on a girl down Bugis Street
Who turned out to be a man.
Theres some lessons I'm just never going to learn.

I've had my heart broke and broken hearts
All around the Seven Seas,
From Vera Cruz east to Panama,
Where e'er I could take my ease.
From Spitsbergen in the far flung north
To Antarctica's icy seas,
These itching feet will always drive me on.

But now my bones are aching
And my eyesight's damned near failed,
I'm returning to that little town
Against which I've oft time railed.
And I'll tell tales in the pub at night
Of all the seas I've sailed.
Any regrets? No, not a blasted one!

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Wotcha
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 05:38 PM

No More Fish, No Fishermen: Words by Sheldon Posen, Music by John Goss (performed by The Finest Kind).

The Farewell Shanty; words by Mervyn Vincent (performed by The Boarding Party and Shanty Jack).

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Cats
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 04:48 PM

guest arthur, Pete did not write Last fisherman, just did an excellent recording of it. The guy in the Anchor Middle bar did

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Mrs Scarecrow
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 01:49 PM

I've written a number of sea songs to add to the female contributors

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 01:42 PM

Cuilionn-

Well, Righteous Mothers are certainly breaking new ground with their launching shanty.

Wow!

Here are several more favorites composed by Fleetwood's Ron Baxter(?) as recorded on BLOOD ON THE ICE:

White Feathers
Common British Tars
Bite of Benin
Farewell to the Clan Line

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: Cuilionn
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 12:40 PM

Re: request for more songs from female composers:

The Seattle vocal group, Righteous Mothers, have a song entitled "She Shanty" that gives a whole new meaning to "heave away."

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: sciencegeek
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 09:33 AM

I'm glad to see that Jim Payne ( hailing from Newfoundland) appeared on a list.... but I feature to add that many on the list have a number of grand songs in the nautical vein & deserve a listen to.

So I'll just add a few names off the top of head...

like Dave Littlefield & Rick Spencer of Mystic, CT.

and Lee Murdock of IL who writes of the Great Lakes & canals.

well... back to work.

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs
From: KathyW
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 12:43 AM

I see you have Tom & Chris Kastle on the list but without any song titles. Of their original songs, I'm particularly fond of "Cold Winds," "Burnham Harbor" (new lyrics for an old tune), "Song for the Whales" and "Shine Out Your Light."

Subject: Lyr Add: PACK O' PIRATES (John Warner)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 12:19 AM

John Warner has written a host of nautical songs - some are listed on his website

A quick list from his singing partner Margaret Walters -

John has about 12 songs in the Old Tom the killer whale of Twofold Bay series - all sea related

13 songs in his Pirates collection - mostly oriented towards young kids;

and another dozen or so songs not so easily classified - Whale Road (for example), Sydney Harbour Tugs, Murray River Shipwright.

And there were a whole lot about the Wharfies strike in 1998 - one in particular that talks about working on the cranes that move containers onto ships.

LYR ADD:   PACK O' PIRATES
John Warner © 11/10/96

We're a pack of pirates, what are we?
Pirates, pirates, yo ho ho!
Rattling along on a rolling sea,
Pirates, pirates, yo ho ho!

Patches on our eyes and big, black hats
Cannon, cutlasses and yellow-eyed cats
Heave her up and away we go!
Pirates, pirates, yo ho ho!

We've a big fat ship with room in the hold ...
For plunder, prisoners, silver and gold ...
If there's no gold in the loot we take,
We'll take lemonade and a chocolate cake ...

Under the Harbour Bridge we'll sail ...
The Skull and Crossbones at our tail ...
We'll bombard a ferry or two,
With water bombs full of paint and glue ...

Out through the Heads in our pirate barque ...
Followed by a pack of hungry shark ...
Mean black fins follow in our wake,
I wonder if sharks like chocolate cake? ...

Don't we look such a scurvy crew? ...
Covered in chocolate, paint and glue ...
Didn't we had a such a lovely day?
Won't mum have a few words to say? ...

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: shipcmo
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 09:59 PM

Yeah, My long time friend Bob Zentz has set a number of C. Fox Smith's poems to music, but I think I'll not cover that category at this time.
Cheers,
Geo

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: Charley Noble
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 08:35 PM

Nice list! Thanks for consolidating it.

Old Fid was composed by Bill Lowndes

Fisherman's Song was composed by Andy M. Stewart

In addition there is the hard-driving Marco Polo song by Jim Stewart of New Brunswick, composed as part of The Marco Polo Suite.

Then there are the contemporary musical settings for old nautical poems of C. Fox Smith, John Masefield, Bill Adams, Harry Kemp, Burt Franklin Jenness, Kipling, and William McFee but maybe they fall into a different category.

None of my creations have achieved a threshold of popularity to merit a mention.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: shipcmo
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 06:15 PM

Current List:
A?, Andrea " ? "
Baxter, Ron "Tramps (Chantey for Coaling)"
Bell, Vic "Snap The Line Tight"
Bellamy, Peter "Around Me Brave Boys", "Roll Down"
Bok, Gordon   "Hills of Isle au Haut", "Cape Anne", "Fundy Bay" The Ways of Man, Frankie on the Sheepscot,
                         Three Boot Philbrick's Lament, his long ballads, Seal Djirl and Saben The Wood Fitter
Bustin, Dillon "Way Down in Shawneetown", "All Aboard the Spray"
Campbell, Jon "Tangueray Martini-o","Catch and Release (new age whaling song)","Keep on Fishing"
Chobotuk, Linda "Canning Salmon"
Cody & Swain "The Old Figurehead Carver"
Collins, Peter "The Last Fisherman"
Conolly, John "Fiddler's Green", 'Trawler town requiem"
Denver, John "Calypso" ( song about diver Jack Custard's converted French minesweeper)
Dunlap, Gina "River Lea."
Durant, Giles"The Wheelhouse door"
Dyer, Bob "The Jim Johnson"
Dylan, Bob "When the Ship Comes in",
Fischer, Archie "Final Trawl"
Forbes, Jack "Rolling down the River"
Garvey, Mary "The Cannery Shed."
Goodenough, Tony "Pump Shanty"
Grainger, Richard "Whitby Whaler"
Joel, Billy "Downeaster Alexa"
KT? "Old Salt"
Kalma, Nanne "Hand Over Hand"
Kaplan, Larry "Alice Wentworth"
Kastle, Tom and Chris
Kelly, Linda "Lament", "Luckiest Sailor"
Kimber "Don't Take The Heroes"
Knight, Peter   "Let her Go Down"
Lewis, Tom "The Last Shanty", "Legend (Marching Inland)", "Dutchman's Trousers", "Sailor's Prayer"
Lightfoot, Gordon "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald","Christian Island"
Lloyd, A. L. "Seamen's Hymn"
Lowe, Jez "The Bergin"
Maclaren, Hamish "Yangtse River Shanty"
Mallett, Dave "Arrowsic" is a really good one about a Maine fisherman.
McColl, Ewan "Shoals of Herring", "The Shellback Song"
McKay, Andrew "Made Of Wood", "Lifeboat Horses", "Dead Reckoning".
Meek, Bill "Time Ashore is Over."
Meneely, Janie "Twiddles
Miles, Dick "Jack the Lad", "Home to the Haven", "Around the Harbour Town"   
Morse, Kendall "The Last Whalehunt", "Ashes on the Sea"
O'Connor, Mike "Carrying Nelson Home"
O'Hegarty, Charlie "Classic Yankee Clipper"
Patterson, Micca "I'm a shanty man that's never been to sea" (Tune Mary Ellen Carter, Stan Rogers)
Payne, Jim "Wave Over Wave"
Pint, William " ? "
Robertson, Harry "With the Antarctic Fleet", "Wee Pot Stove","Ballina Whalers","Heave Away"
Rogers, Stan "Barrett's Privateers", "The Jeannie C", 'Lockeeper', "Make and break Harbor", "White Squall",
                      "The Mary Ellen Carter"
Russel, Kelly " ? "
Seeger, Peggy "The Lifeboat Mona"
Steven, Ken "Survivor Leave
Sunde, Rudy "Auckland to the Bluff"
Tawney, Cyril "Diesel and Shale", "Chicken on a Raft", "Grey Funnel Line" "Haul Away the Dhhajsa",
                        "On a British Submarine","Sally Free and Easy",
Trickett, Ed "Sea Fever"
Triggs, Stanley G. "The Wreck of the C.P. Yorke","The Wreck of the Green Cove"
Trueman-Border, Ron "Rageing Sea"
Warner, John "Anderson' Coast","Batavia"
Watson, Bob 'Mollymauk', 'Shantyman', "Neptune's Daughter", "Tasman Buster."
Wisner, Tom "Cheseapeake Born"
Wooley, Shep "Down By The Dockyard Wall"
Zentz, Bob "Light From the Lighthouse"
?                   "Birkenhead Drill"
?                   "Lower the Yawl Boat Down"
?                   "The Old Sailor"
?                   "Old Fid"
?                   "Fisherman's wife"
?                   "Fisherman's Song"
?                   "Cornish Lads"
?                   'The Merchant Navy Men'

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: SINSULL
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 07:59 AM

Barry Finn's Shanty

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: SylviaN
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 07:36 AM

The Luckiest Sailor - Linda Kelly

I could add more Hissyfit songs.

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: Hamish
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 07:21 AM

Rolling Down the River - Jack Forbes

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 07:07 AM

Another Stan Rogers one - The Mary Ellen Carter and our very own Micca's derivation thereof, A Shantyman that's never been to sea.

Cheers

DeG

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 06:30 AM

Knittershanty By Mr Red et al.

"And it's click, knit one girls, purl one, drop one, soddit, pickitup. Oops! Cast off me girls, let's sing the Knittershanty."

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: bubblyrat
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 04:16 AM

Sorry, I meant "Dghajsa", although "Dye So " is so much easier to say !

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: bubblyrat
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 04:13 AM

Also by Cyril T ; "Haul Away the Dhhajsa"
Ditto Gordon L ; "Christian Island"
By Steeleye Span fiddle- player ; "Let her Go Down"
John Denver; "Calypso" ( song about diver Jack Custard's converted French minesweeper)

PS "Schools" of herring ?? "Shoals",you mean,surely ??--!!

Subject: RE: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: Bert
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 03:05 AM

Here's one of mine

Subject: 'New' Sea Songs & Shanties
From: shipcmo
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 03:39 PM

It occurs to me that alongside the various historical collections of Sea Songs and Shanties, that now is the time to put together a compendium of the "new" shanties composed as entertainment, as opposed to "work" and self-entertainment; the new tunes, which are ballads to a lost time.
Here is a start.
Cheers
Geo

Tom Lewis "The Last Shanty", "Legend (Marching Inland)"
Ken Steven "Survivor Leave"
Cyril Tawney "Diesel and Shale", "Chicken on a Raft", "Grey Funnel Line"
Stan Rogers "Barrett's Privateers", "The Jeannie C"
Gordon Bok   "Hills of Isle au Haut", "Cape Anne"
Ewan McColl "Schools of Herring"
Charlie O'Hegarty "Classic Yankee Clipper"
John Conolly "Fiddler's Green"
Gordon Lightfoot "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
Tom Wisner "Cheseapeake Born"
Dillon Bustin "Way Down in Shawneetown"
Archie Fischer "Final Trawl"
Larry Kaplan "Alice Wentworth"
Peter Bellamy "Around Me Brave Boys"
Peggy Seeger "The Lifeboat Mona"
Bob Zentz "Light From the Lighthouse"
Stanley G. Triggs "The Wreck of the C.P. Yorke","The Wreck of the Green Cove"
Harry Robertson "With the Antarctic Fleet"
Bob Dylan "When the Ship Comes in"

Ed Trickett (Sea Fever)
Kelly Russel (Wave Over Wave) ?
Nanne Kalma (Hand Over Hand)
William Pint
Tom and Chris Kastle

"Birkenhead Drill"
"Lower the Yawl Boat Down"

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 08:42 AM

Jim Radford singing this

Gets me every time.

---

Threads combined. Messages below are from a new thread.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: GUEST,philb
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 07:11 AM

Downeaster Alexa by Billy Joel.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:43 AM

around the harbour town ,dick miles

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: GUEST,Arthur
Date: 24 Jan 10 - 06:32 AM

"The Last Fisherman" by Peter Collins from Sussex.Heard aguy sing it in the Middle Bar at Sidmouth a few years ago (when it was still downstairs, had the whole place singing. What a song!

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 08:14 PM

Another candidate might be the "Yangtse River Shanty" which is currently blazing a merry trail around the world. Hamish Maclaren originally composed this song as part of his folk opera Sailor with Banjo in 1929. I substantially changed the wording when I adapted it for singing back in 2002, recorded by my group Roll & Go. Then Barry Finn gave the song another overhaul in 2003 and later recorded it as a shanty in 2007. John Roberts also recorded a version in 2003 which is closer to Barry Finn's than mine but with appropriate acknowledgments to us both. The latest person to record the song is Danny Spooner in Australia, who provides a sprightly concertina accompaniment.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: deadfrett
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 07:15 PM

White Squall and The Mary Ellen Carter by Sran Rogers. Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot. Dave

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: olddude
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 10:57 AM

did I mention kendall doing ashes on the sea ... still my all time favorite and no one did it better. Thank you Utah Phillips

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Jan 10 - 10:31 AM

"Canning Salmon," of course, by Linda Chobotuk!

There is also Jez Lowe''s "The Bergin" and Bill Meek''s "Time Ashore is Over."

And we have Janie Meneely to thank for composing "Twiddles."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: mg
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 08:00 PM

There is Linda C. of Vancouver BC who wrote the Canning Salmon..

There are several great women singers/writers at Fisher Poets..we really need to systematically record them...


Who else...Andrea A. of Seattle area has written some great stuff. mg

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 07:55 PM

I've just scrolled through this thread and with the exception of C. Fox Smith, Linda Kelley, and Mary Garvey (I thought I posted her "Cannery Shed" but can't find it now) there are no other women composers mentioned. Maybe there aren't any more!

There is also Gina Dunlap's brilliant reinterpretation of the traditional shanty "River Lea."

There are the Johnson Girls, a favorite group of mine, but I don't think they've composed any songs.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 07:37 PM

Dave Mallett's song, Arrowsic is a really good one about a Maine fisherman.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 07:29 PM

Jim Payne's "Wave Over Wave"

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 02:51 PM

Bob Zentz also sings some excellent sea songs.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE SHELLBACK SONG (Ewan MacColl)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 01:06 PM

Shellback - based on interviews with an old sailor named Ben Bright Charles Parker met on Tower Bridge in London.
Then somewhere in his seventies, he had been under sail, jumped ship in the US in the 30s and worked with the I.W.W. (Wobblies), given songs to J. M. Carpenter, and had ended up in London acting as an assistant to a escape artist who performed for the tourists visiting The Tower of London.
Parker and MacColl recorded him in his bed-sitter in North London until one day they turned up at his home to find he had joined the crew of a cargo vessel heading for Australia. He was last heard of working on a coaster in South Australia.
MaColl and Seeger produced a monograph on his life and experiences, and MacColl wrote this based on his description of life at sea.
Jim Carroll

THE SHELLBACK SONG
Words & Music by EWAN MACCOLL

I am a bold sea-faring man, I come from everywhere;
Name any point of the compass you like, you're bound to find me there.
Born in a gale in the Roaring Forties, entered in the log -
Sent up aloft to the tipper t'gan's'ls, and christened in navy grog.

All that I own are the clothes on me back and the tools of the sailor's trade;
Me fid and me palm, a few needles, a spike, a knife with a good, keen blade.
I've a hunk in the fo'c'sle, a place on a bench in the galley where I can feed,
And a hook for to hang me old oilskins up. What more does a shellback need ?

Been up in the rigging with Lascars and Swedes when the stormy winds do blow;
Bunted the royals with Arabs and Finns with the boiling sea below;
Hauled on the braces with Friesians, damn near drowned in the same big wave;
Chinamen, Yankees and Scousers and all of 'em bloody hard men to shave.

I've sailed both Atlantics and doubled both Capes more times than I can tell;
Fought the big seas in a parish-rigged barque and froze at Cape Farewell.
I've cursed the calms in the Doldrums when you'd swear the wind was dead;
Laid to off the Horn in a westerly gale that would blow the hair off your head.

I've shipped in high-loaded East Indiamen, been crew on a coastal barge;
Come bowling along on a smart clipper ship when she was running large.
Schooners, lime-juicers and barcatines, they're all well-known to me,
And I've worked as a flying fish sailor dodging the reefs in the China Sea.

To the maggoty beef and weevily bread, I've added me word of abuse;
I've pounded hard biscuit to powder and mixed it with bug-fat and jaggery juice.
With the galley awash for a week on end, I've gore hungry early and late;
Been served with pea-soup that could stand on the poop deck and scare off a blue-nosed mate.

I've signed on in short-handed Yankee ships with masters who know the score;
I've sailed with the drinkers who can't navigate a course past the bar-room door.
I've been with masters who're seamen and know how to treat a sailor well,
And some of the others, the miserable buggers, have made me life a hell.

I know all the boarding-house keepers ashore from Cardiff to Tokyo;
Know all the crimps and waterfront pimps from Riga to Callao.
I've spent me advance at Rasmussen the Dane's, I've lodged with Paddy West,
And I've know the slop-chest to take half of me screw while Big Nellie she took the rest.

I've sailed out of Rio in ballast, I've loaded grain in Frisco bay;
Raced with a cargo of tea from Shanghai on the old Thermopylae;
I've carried nitrates from Iquiqui and whisky out of Leith;
Sailed in the woolrace on old Cutty Sark, with the wind between her teeth.

Goodbye, you square-riggers, your voyaging's done, farewell to the days of sail;
Goodbye, you Cape-Horners and every tall ship that ever defied a gale;
Goodbye to the shellbacks who rode the winds through a world of sea and sky,
Your roving is ended, your seafaring's over; you mariners all, goodbye.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 10:33 AM

There's also Harry Robertson from Australia:

Wee Pot Stove
Ballina Whalers
Heave Away

And John Warner, also from Australia:

Anderson' Coast
Batavia

Dillon Bustin:

Shawneetown
All Aboard the Spray

A. L. Lloyd's "Seamen's Hymn" which some now consider "traditional" (the tune is!)

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: jacqui.c
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 08:26 AM

Fundy Bay - Gordon Bok.
Carrying Nelson Home
Fisherman's Song
Don't Take The Heroes - Kimber
Cornish Lads
The Lockkeeper
Old Salt
Mary Ellen Carter - Stan Rogers
The Last Whalehunt - Kendall Morse

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 08:15 AM

Anything Gordon Bok does.
Carrying Nelson Home as sung by Martin Wyndham Reid
Old Fid
Fisherman's wife
Old Salt. written by our own KT
The Wheelhouse door. Giles Durant
The Jeannie C. Stan Rogers
Make and break Harbor. Stan Rogers

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 07:04 AM

Charley, you are quite right , I was meaning songs from, let's say, the last 50 years.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 05:12 PM

Artful Dodger-

Given that Ron mentioned three "contemporary" songwriters as examples of what he was looking for, I assumed he was not expecting more vintage compositions. But, perhaps, Ron will clarify what he was looking for.

Another fine contemporary nautical songwriter would be Rhode Island's Jon Campbell:

Tangueray Martini-o
Catch and Release (new age whaling song)
Keep on Fishing

And then there's Mary Garvey from the Pacific Northwest with such gems as "The Cannery Shed."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: olddude
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 04:03 PM

kendall doing ashes on the sea

kendall ashes on the sea

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Artful Codger
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 03:50 PM

Charlie: I didn't see any mention in the original post about "recent", only "composed". Consequently, "Stately Southerner" (and for that matter, "Gallant Seamen's Sufferings" and the many songs by Dibdin, Jr.) apply. In fact, I'm much more interested in the older composed songs than the newer, which generally whiff more of the swimming pool than of the sea.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Severn
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 08:34 AM

WHOOPS!, that's Linda KELLY!. Sorry 'bout dat!


"Snap The Line Tight" by Vic Bell is another personal favorite.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 08:32 AM

Carrying Nelson Home by Mike O'Connor

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Severn
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 08:26 AM

There are excellent writers among the Mudcatters.

Andrew McKay a/k/a Crane Driver writes wonderful songs with novel plotlines often set in or dealing with Wales, like "Made Of Wood" "Lifeboat Horses" and "Dead Reckoning".

Linda Lelly of the UK duo Hissyfit, who posts under her own name, has written gems such as "Lament" and "Luckiest Sailor".

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 08:20 AM

Down by the Dockyard wall by Shep Wooley, Sailor's Prayer by Tom lewis, and Rolling down the River by jack Forbes, all deserve their current popularity.