IF YOU KNOW OF ANYONE ELSE WHO MAY BE INTERESTED IN THIS INFORMATION, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PASS IT ON IN ANY WAY YOU SEE FIT.

 

Good Morning "Maritime Folkies" All,

 

It would appear that some incorrect information has been passed around and that the rumour mill may have started with regard to the continued performance of  "The Shanty Crew".  This e-mail is designed to put the record straight and to state the position as it actually is.

 

After 30 years of performance with "The Shanty Crew", Chris Roche resigned on 18 Jul 06.  His contribution to expanding the knowledge of Sea Shanties and how they were sung at sea has been enormous, not only did he research and sing them but he became a genuine "Cape Horner" sailing round "The Horn" under square sail.  He has also been deeply involved with the association of "Cape Horners", editing their magazine.  Not only has he performed all round The World, but he has visited the graves of sailing ships in the most obscure of places and he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything concerning sailing vessels under square sail from the heyday of sail and the present day.  He has also contributed a fund of knowledge to the study of maritime lore and has demonstrated this with numerous interesting and entertaining slide shows on a variety of related subjects.

 

"The Shanty Crew" however continues and has just completed a particularly successful  weekend at the "Broadstairs Folk Festival".  The current line up in alphabetical order is: Steve Belsey, Charlie Daish, Dominic Magog, David Pleasants, David Rees and Martin Spearman.  We hope to be rejoined in the not too distant future by Paul Brightwell, who is currently taking a sabbatical.  We also have two prospective recruits in the pipeline.  As many of you will know Steve and Dom have a total of 51 years of singing with "The Shanty Crew" between them and both were instructed by Stan Hugill in the use of shanties at sea, knowledge which we put to good use at our recent "workshop" at Broadstairs.

 

We have sung in Poland and Finland this year as well as our usual stint at Lancaster, we shall be singing in Cardiff over the August bank holiday weekend and  the "Deal Festival" on the third weekend in September.  We are currently exploring the possibility of singing at Harwich, which has replaced the Walton Shanty festival, in October.

 

We hope to see many of you at Liverpool for the celebration of  the centenary of  Stan Hugill's birth.  As Ken Lardner knows we shall be singing there and we shall be joined by former crew member Tom Kelly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have made it this far, thank you for your patience and thank you for reading through this somewhat lengthy e-mail.

 

Best Regards