Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 06:08 PM

Thanks Freddy: my "blickies" usually work: must have been an off day!

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 16 Aug 18 - 04:41 AM

Jim Hancock of Scunthorpe has written Nights Like This - You wouldn't send a dog to sea on nights like this. It's based on the reminiscences of a sea-faring friend.

You can find it on the Clarty Sough CD Work’s a Bitch. Jim is also a member of the UK group Roaring Forties, formed in 1995 for the Hull Sea Fever festival.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 11:21 PM

Just came across a Cd made by the son of C.Bonney Quinn who worked on the yachts in Stonington Maine circa 1940?

http://www.reboprecords.com/catalog/quinn.htm

https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/archived/downeast-storytellers-will-regale-folks-with-yarns-and-songs/

Which reminds me, you might check out the Fisher Poets http://www.fisherpoets.org/
https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/stateofwonder/segment/fisherpoets-gathering-live-poetry/

their events often include songs

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 08:08 PM

Ring on the Homeward Bounders
thread.cfm?threadid=163925


~~~~~~~~~~~
TB
in the clicky
paste the URL then
delete everything before
thread.cfm......
> create link

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:05 PM

Link not working but you'll find it in the Lyrics search box!

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 06:03 PM

Song from a friend of mine, Duncan McNab, and a real salt, "Ring on the Homeward Bounders" - he occasionally posts on here, and it is somewhere on another thread. Like here:
Ring on the Homeward Bounders

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:42 PM

Bob Roberts was a singer and musician who spent much of his working life in boats, including the spritsail barge Cambria.

Cicely Fox Smith wrote about the life she observed on board sailing ships.

Together, their craft may have produced the song Race of Long Ago/When We Raced the Robin Adair.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:37 AM

Other songs from life on seismic vessels in the 70s and 80s include:

"We Don't Smoke Marijuana In The Gunshack"

and:

"We're The Worlds Worst Back Deck N*ggers"

but I'm not about to post either of those here, sorry.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:31 AM

The system I used was the third large image down on this page:

Magnavox INS

The woman in the mini-skirt didn't come as standard! The Silent 700 (mis-named!) teletype was my basic workstation. The Satnav receiver is above the tape decks in the left hand rack. I knew Bob Horne very well, and he would often pass programme patches to me over Portishead Radio, to vessel callsign Hotel Oscar 5389:

"0110011, 11001110, 01100110, how copy" ....etc. Sometimes for half an hour, with me reading back each block for confirmation. It would piss off other vessels in the radio queue behind us, I can tell you.

Contrast with the instrument room on a more modern vessel:

Ramform Titan Instrument Room

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:16 AM

"There are LOTS of great "sea" songs, but not all penned from real experience. "
I put Ewan's up because it was lifted directly from a sailor who spent his entire life at sea,
Ithink that, given the fact that 'real sailors' stopped making songs a long time ago, you are going to get a very limited response beyong those included in Cyril Tawney's 'Blue Funnel Line' collection
If your partner's songs count, then so do those made by some of the singers from Grimsby, some of whom are included in New City Songster
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 10:06 AM

I can remember the first verse, but it is 39 years since I wrote it....and we did have "Satnav" in 1979....it was the old Transit Doppler Satnav system (and my official job title by 1981 was "Satnav Chief"):

The thing about this job I hate
Is working with Rho/3 Pulse/8
As on the graph it gaily plots
Positions in the form of dots
That dance and swim before my eyes
As I slowly start to realise
The course the numbers say we steam
The Satnav puts upon our beam
Half a mile or more, I think
The Bloody Pulse/8 is on the blink


There are I think, without digging it out, another 5 verses, ending with:

So seismic companies be on your guard
The choice is limited, I know it's hard
But if you need results that carry some "weight"
Don't trust your positioning to Bloody Pulse/8



(We would "weight" different positioning and ancillary sensors....Doppler sonar, thermistor, Loran, etc) differently in the ship's INS (Integrated Navigation System) according to their precision and reliability.

But, as I said, it makes little sense to someone who wasn't working on seismic vessels in the late 70s or early 80s.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 09:38 AM

As I recall from the beginning of the discussion, this person was looking for songs made by ACTUAL sailors / seamen. Did Ewan MacColl go to sea? Robert Burns certainly didn't (A Man's a Man)

It would be interesting to keep the thread relevant to the original query

There are LOTS of great "sea" songs, but not all penned from real experience. I grew up sailing living in a fishing community and married a fisherman. My current partner has sailed recreationally and built ships for a living. We both are musicians and write songs, but have not made a living "on the sea"... so do our songs count?

Best-Julia Lane

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 04:14 AM

I worked on seismic survey vessels for several years and wrote a poem whilst working for Decca Survey about their radio navigation system "Pulse/8".

I recently set it to music, so I guess it's now a song. Not performed it anywhere yet, and probably wouldn't except to a gathering of former seismic survey crew, as it makes no sense at all to anyone who wasn't involved in the industry in the 1980s.

It's called "Bloody Pulse/8"

I gave a copy to the Chief Navigator of a company whose vessels I'd been on, and they published it in their company mag....prompting Racal Survey (which had by then taken over Decca Survey ....and yes, it's the same Decca of Decca Records!) to threaten legal action for defaming their system (Rho/3 Pulse/8, a variant variant of the vanilla system). I'd helped develop the system, so if anyone had a right to point out its shortcomings, I reckon it was me :-) .

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 03:24 AM

Another (deep sea fishing) song from New City Songster
Jim Carroll

The Deep-Sea Fishermen words and music, MATT ARMOUR

1. Come all you laddies, gether here, fae the country far and near
Come and hear what life can haud for you,
Leave yon slavish factory floor, close yon drudging sweat-shop door,
There are better things a lad like you can do.
And there’s no’ much pleasure now in ahint yon painfu’ plough;
Ye’ll break your back afore ye break the land.
We can offer you much more, of life off Iceland’s shore,
Come and be a British deep-sea fisherman.

Chorus.
Aye, come on, laddie, be a man, and seek adventure while you can,
Ye’ll find the fish off Iceland’s shining shore;
Man, it’s great, aye man, it’s grand to be a deep-sea trawlerman,
At a basic rate of twenty pence an hour.

2. ‘Now haud on!’, I hear ye say, ‘There’s sic a thing as bonus pay —
All the gaffers pay percentage on each catch.’
Aye, man, there ye might be right, but it’s clear as the Northern Light
That your first thin run will also be your last.
And no union can complain, for there’s nae contract in your name,
Nae security, nae sympathy, nae trust.
If there’s nae fish in the hold, or you’re hurt (or just too auld),
That’s the finish, man, you’re spent - you’re out - you’re bust.
(chorus)

3. But of course, there’s something more: you get three long days ashore;
Three WHOLE days in every twenty-one.
There’s one to re-adjust, and there’s one to slake your thirst,
And there’s one to key up for another run.
And it’s no’ much of a game for all the folk you leave at hame,
Tae weary and tae worry and tae wait,
Your wife’s baith Mum and Dad tae your wee bit girnin’ lad,
One seventh of their life is all you rate,
(chorus)

4. There’s nae sic thing as compensation, if you’re injured at your station,
While making profit for the company boat.
In the deep-sea trade the day, there’s nae sic thing as severance pay,
And the only handshake will be round your throat.
But if you drown up in the ice, two thousand pounds will be your price.
Spend that in your bleak Icelandic grave.
You risk your life, your limbs, your health, to increase the gaffer’s wealth
You’re a trawlerman, a labourer - a slave, (chorus)

Glossay:        
haud        hold
ahint        behind
sic        such
gaffer        boss
hame        home
girnin’        crying
bit        little

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:36 AM

If anybody wants a copy of the Ben Bright booklet let me have an e-mail address and I'll send them a digitised version

I've been dredging (excuse the joke) the pages of 'The New City Songster'; magazines Peggy Seeger edited for The Singers club
They were made up of songs sent to her by songwriters from as far afield as Boggert Hole Clough and and Brisbane and ran into 20 ediitions
I found a number of modern sea songs
This one got an "hounourable mention" in a copetition one held by the club by a supporter who didn't know what to do with a first edition of the first set of Child he had found and didn't want
The winner was John Pole's 'Punch and Judy'

There's a tune available if anybody wants it
I'll post more when I get time
Jim Carroll

The Western Trader: Words and music Jimmy Brown

We’re standing in the engine room aboard the Western Trader
And we’re sailing home from Glasgow on a passage from Jamaica
The turbines are as smooth as silk and the boiler pressure’s steady
We’ll be steaming up the River Clyde in the morning bright and early

Chorus
And it’s ring down telegraph,
finish with engines Jock,
Shut down your boilers lads,
we’re tied up in the docks,

Now, it hasn't been the best of trips, like some we've known before
Two firemen were scalded after we left Baltimore;
And the fight we had in Kingston, when McKenzie lost his teeth —
Well, his folks won't recognise him when he gets home to Leith!

CHORUS
And it's full ahead engines,
full ahead engines,
Sail like we had mail!
And we'll make up the two days lost
we spent in Kingston Jail.

An engineer on watch learns to live with noise and heat,
Like the throbbing of the engines, the propeller's mighty beat,
With your hand on the controls, well, you think of many things.
But you know that you're not dreaming when that telegraphs it rings:

Chorus
And it's full astern engines, full astern engines,
Throw the throttle wide;
There's fishing boats and fog out there,
Pray God we don't collide.

And now we see the tenements and rows of shipyard cranes;
We'll be paying off at Yorkhill and we'll see our wives and weans;
But will we go to sea again, or go back to the yards?
Well, whatever way we choose, my lads, we know it will be hard.

CHORUS
And it's stand by engines, stand by engines,
We're casting off at ten!
And we're sailing off to God knows where,
and we'll come back Christ knows when.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: BobL
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:32 AM

Loadsa Tom Lewis lyrics and other info are to be found on his website

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 02:00 AM

Man to man the world 'oer,
shall brothers be for a' that.

what brilliant lines.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Aug 18 - 01:55 AM

A Mans A Man, absolutely, great song.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 07:53 PM

South Street Seaport Museum used to have a booklet about Ben Bright available. I do not know whether it is still in print.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,ottery
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 05:25 PM

I rather like Flower of Scotland in its earlier quieter form (1968):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiyLuv3GSs4

For Scottish National Anthem, I still nominate 'A Man's a Man For a' That'.

Just listening to Karine Polwart's version of 'Freedom Come All Ye now'.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:53 PM

Another great Hamish Henderson song ' The Freedom Come All Ye ' which Dick Gaughan recommended [ and I agree ] as a new Scottish National anthem rather than the more popular but anti-English ' Flower of Scotland '

Dave H

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 02:22 PM

Thanks for the correction, Dave Hanson. I actually have the tune in a book of fiddle music somewhere with James Robertson credited, but it obviously slipped my mind.

Great song, great tune!

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 10:14 AM

Does anybody have the words to Phil Colclough's 'Leaving of London' ?
Far superior to 'Song For Ireland'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 06:15 AM

Several of Ewan MacColl’s songs for Singing The Fishing quickly entered the repertoire of a generation of folk singers - now they are often labelled traditional.

And there are plenty of songs about the life of sailors from the fishing ports of Hull, Grimsby and Fleetwood - including songs by Mike Waterson, John Conolly and Alan Bell.

The Unknown Sailor met his fate ashore in 1786;

From his home in London
An able seaman strode
Back to his ship he made his trip
Upon the Portsmouth Road

At the village inn in Thursley
He stopped to buy a round
And there three men he did befriend
They too were Portsmouth bound

    As you travel on life's journey
    You'll meet your fellow man
    But take great care, for while you share
    Others take what they can

On the lonely climb up Hind Head
Those men made their attack
And with a knife, they took his life
Then made off with his pack

Now those cut-throats hang in irons
On the top of Gibbet Hill
To tell us all what will befall
Men who treat others ill


A stone stands by the roadside
To mark where he was killed
As travellers know, no grass will grow
Where that red blood was spilled

At peace in Thursley churchyard
The unknown sailor sleeps
His kin still yearn for his return
From sailing on the deep


You can sing it to the tune of The Calico Printer's Clerk, written by Dave Moran.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 03:20 AM

I'll add my support for Tom Lewis too.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 03:16 AM

One of the best for me is MacColl's "Shellback", it is based on an ecconter his mate, Charles Parker had with a man on London Bridge
Charlie stopped to watch an escapologist doing his act on the bridge and got chatting to the assistant, who turned out to be an old sailor, Ben Bright, who had sailed out of Swansea, originally under sail - he sang for J M Carpenter - some of his songs are in the collection

Ben had jumped ship in California in the thirties and had Joined Joe Hill's Wobblies, helping to organise the fruit pickers, along with T-Bone Slim and Helen Gurley Flynn
Charlie introduced him to Ewan and Peggy and they recorded his reminiscences over a few months.
One day they turned up to record Ben, then in his mid 70s, to find he had left - they later found he had got a job as a deckhand, sailed to Australia, where he got permanent work on a coaster - he probably died at sea - a real 'shellback'

MacColl wrote 'Shellback' based on those interviews, for one of Philip Donnellan's documentaries, 'Before the Mast' - he used the sea-going terms Ben had described
Im my opinion, the best of MaColl's songs were besed on the recordings with 'real' people
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 upper 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 gone 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: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 03:03 AM

Louis(a) Killen'a repertoire maybe
his obit

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 14 Aug 18 - 01:57 AM

Actually the tune for The 51st Highlands Division Farewell to Sicily is called ' Farewell to the Creeks ' a 1st World War pipe march written by Pipe Major James Robertson.

Dave H

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,ottery
Date: 13 Aug 18 - 08:40 AM

I can't help but mention one of my favourite songs - The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily:

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/51st-highland-divisions-farewell-sicily

Now, this doesn't really count. It was written by Hamish Henderson, not a sailor but a soldier in WW2, and set to a traditional tune. With verses like

Sae fare weel, ye dives o’ Sicily
(Fare ye weel, ye shieling an’ ha’),
We’ll a’ mind shebeens and bothies
   Whaur kind signorinas were cheerie.

It draws so strongly on the traditions of sea songs that I think it's fair to bring it up in this thread. It shares a lot in terms of mood and attitude with the kind of songs you're looking for, even if it doesn't fall strictly within the "written by a sailor" limits.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Sugwash
Date: 13 Aug 18 - 08:01 AM

I was in the Royal Navy submarine service for twenty years. I wrote the following song based on the tall stories of two merchant seamen of advanced years I encountered on a run ashore in Toulon. They spent the evening outdoing each other’s hilarious stories, these, interspersed with some of my own, formed the body of the song ‘Girls of Every Colour'

https://youtu.be/KvjRPghID9E

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,julia L
Date: 13 Aug 18 - 07:20 AM

Gordon Bok sailed/sails on the Schooners out of Camden Maine

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 13 Aug 18 - 07:08 AM

Shep Wooley ( Down by the Dockyard Wall etc)was a regular for many years, in great demand at RN messes all around the world.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 11:12 PM

Harry Robertson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Robertson_(folk_singer) was in the British navy for seven years, then worked as a merchant seaman on oil tankers, then worked as ship's engineer on a Norwegian whaling fleet. His 1971 album, Whale Chasing Men, now available on CD, is full of great songs he wrote. He passed in 1995.

I'll second ChanteyLass' nomination of Tom Lewis.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 09:19 PM

Tom Lewis, retired submariner, has written some songs including A Sailor Ain't a Sailor (ain't a sailor any more).

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 07:35 PM

Worth including some of the late Stan Rogers' songs from maritime Canada. Not sure if he was a salt himself, but certainly lived and wrote in the right area!

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 03:18 PM

during the 80's and 90's I wrote almost entirely in the genre of boats that I knew, ranging from the Liberty Ship John Brown and my own schooner down to the Ferry Sloops on the Hudson.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: CupOfTea
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 01:45 PM

Tall Ship captain Tom Kastle, formerly of Chicago, has written a couple splendid songs. Cold Winds about the end of the sailing season on Lake Michigan, and The Eastland, A heartbreaking tale of the largest loss of life shipwreck on the Great Lakes when an excursion boat rolled over at the docks on the Chicago River, set to the A part of Carolan's Dream. I know he also did an amusing parody of South Australia with verses about doing boat maintenance in Burnam Harbor.

Lee Murdock has taken historical material about Great Lakes ships to turn into songs, and is frequently found giving singing tours and sails to celebrate sailing life.

Though not a career sailor, Canadian David Francey has written several songs about sailing on the Great Lakes. All Lights Burning Bright & The Ballad of (forgot the name) come to mind. That's among the living- but the songs Stan Rogers wrote about salt and fresh water sailors resonate strongly with sailors.

In the "I didn't expect THAT" category are a couple songs from the incredible Shel Silverstein Mermaid of Ontario is as silly as can be, but The Great Lakes Song, co written by Pat Dailey, is a lovely tribute to the life of working sailors on the Great Lakes.

Then, there are River songs... If you think about those who do anything with boats, you have lots of choice.

Off to go sing some,
Joanne in Cleveland, on the shore of Lake Erie.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Domdaniel
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 12:13 PM

OOOOOh excellent! I especially like Chicken on a raft. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,ottery
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 11:42 AM

Also, I can't prove it, but folk osmosis has made me believe that "The Bonnie Ship The Diamond" was written by a real sailor, who may (so A.L. Lloyd speculated) have been lost in a disaster in a Greenland bay.

Bit too early for your time-frame though - early nineteenth century.

Subject: RE: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: GUEST,ottery
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 11:37 AM

Cyril Tawney served thirteen years in the Royal Navy.

Sally Free and Easy along with Grey Funnel Line and the lively Chicken on a Raft are three of his best known songs.

Subject: Modern(ish) Sailor songs by real salts?
From: Domdaniel
Date: 11 Aug 18 - 08:56 AM

Lately I've been getting into sailing (yachts and hopefully one day tall ships) and subsequently remembering a lot of the sailing/sailor's songs I know and learning new ones. I've got Sailor's Boots, Barrack Street, Saucy Sailor and Rolling Sea on my To Learn playlist at the moment.

Perhaps I'm being overly romantic, but I like to think that at least some of these songs had their origins in composition by real sailors (or people who knew them in the case of the Green Bed or Home Boys Home etc.) singing about their actual experiences on the sea.

So since I am myself becoming a (modern, distinctly amateurish) sailor, I wondered are there any modern sailors who have written folk songs/sea shanties about their experiences and sailing?

Or maybe I am just being overly romantic...

All help appreciated, thanks and Blue Skies, Dom