The San Francisco Bay Area is rich in maritime history. Indeed, historic ships like Balclutha, C.A. Thayer, and Eureka gave birth to San Francisco itself, bringing thousands of miners during the Gold Rush and hauling the materials needed to build the city. Hyde Street Pier is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. This year (2000) marks the twentieth anniversary of the monthly shanty sings, held aboard either the schooner C.A. Thayer or the square-rigged Balclutha.

Shanties were the work songs of the sailor while sea songs (fore bitters) were sung for entertainment. For an in-depth discussion of the different types of shanties, when and how they were used, and their history I would recommend Stan Hugill’s book Shanties from the Seven Seas. Stan Hugill was an actual shanty singer aboard sailing vessels. I had the pleasure of meeting him and hearing him sing during his appearances at Hyde Street Pier’s yearly Festival of the Sea and other events.

In an attempt to be more traditional and to preserve the spontaneity and edge that I believe work songs should have, the shanties on this album were recorded live and are not overly arranged.

All photos are of Balclutha, 1910-1920, used with permission of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Shanty choruses are combinations of the following singers: Roger Branble, Stephen Canright, Barry Finn, Denis Franklin, Dick Holdstock, Peter Kasin, Tom Murphy, Jim Nelson, Ricky Rackin, and Ed Silberman.

Out of the Rain: Richard Adrianowicz, Marla Fibish, and Suzanne Friend

HEAVE AWAY CHEERILY O! - Track 1

Used at the capstan and pumps, this shanty is taken from Stan Hugill's book Shanties from the Seven Seas. It is shown in Ab, a key with four flats that gives the song an interesting texture while fitting quite nicely within my vocal range. I changed the first three lines of the full chorus into call and response lines. This is not the traditional way to sing the full chorus but I really like the way it sounds.

Stan Hugill's notes on the song:

Our next 'heave' shanty is Heave Away Cheerily, O!. Only two collections give it. Davis & Tozer give it as capstan, Harlow as both pumps and windlass. Davis & Tozer state that the words and music of their version are 'entirely original'. If by this the editors mean that they composed it then seamen, obviously, must have taken it from their book in 1887 (first edition) and made use of it at sea - a magnificent gesture! For Harlow mentions it having been sung many times aboard his ship. He declares that there were many unprintable verses. I learnt my version from a Geordie shipmate in the twenties.

This [Hugill's verses] is much the same as that of Davis & Tozer. Harlow gives verses 1 and 2 in similar vein, then:

[verse 3]
They're crying, 'Come back, my dear sailor in blue
For no one can fill the place vacant by you'

[verse 4]
They love us for money, whoever he be
But when it's all gone we are shanghaied to sea

[verse 5]
Then sing, 'Goodbye Sally, your wonders I'll tell
But when with another, I'll wish you in hell

'Geordie', my friend, always sang the word 'cheerily' as 'cheerilye' in accordance with typical sailor usage when singing any word ending with '-ly'.

The word 'cheerily' mean 'quickly' and was often used at capstan and halyards when exhorting the men to harder efforts ... 'Heave away cheerily, me hearties!' ... 'Cheerily, lads, hand over hand!' It was used in both the Navy and Merchant Marine and Shakespeare uses it in Act I, Scene I, of his play The Tempest, where the bosun calls out: 'Heigh, my hearts, cheerly, cheerly, my hearts; yare, yare! Take in the topsail...'

'Cheerily' had an opposite number, 'handsomely'. This meant heave or haul slow and steady but appears to have been used more in the Navy than in the Merchant Service.

AWAY SUSANNA! (aka CAN’T YE DANCE THE POLKA)- Track 2

Fiddle: Peter Kasin

This halyard shanty is also from Stan Hugill's Shanties From the Seven Seas. On this recording I left out the sixth verse and put in a fiddle break in it's place. I love shanties that mention different ports and this song was especially appropriate because San Francisco is mentioned. Away, Susanna! is the shanghai version of Can't Ye Dance the Polka, the well known song about the sailor who gets drunk and is cheated out of his money and clothes.

Stan Hugill's notes about this song:

This capstan song has many versions of the words, both those of the verses and chorus, and the song probably started life in the Western Ocean Packets about the thirties or forties of the last century, when the polka reached America from Bohemia. The tune is thought to be that of an Irish air Larry Doolan, and one version does start with a verse from this ballad:

My name is Larry Doolan, Oi'm a native of the soil,
If yer want a day's diversion, bhoys,
Oi'll drive ye out in stoile

The words of the chorus give room for speculation. In my more modern first version the first lines of the chorus run: Then away Susanna, my fair maid... These words I've heard sung by Charlie Evans, a fine shantyman, one-time member of the crew of the Yankee ship William T. Lewis, by Chenoworth ex-Mount Stewart, A. Spencer, ex-Monogahela, who had learnt it from a German stevedore in 'Frisco, and many other 'modern' sailing-ship men.

The older Packet ship words were "Away you Santi, my dear honey..." or "Away you Santi, my dear Annie..."Sometimes too one would hear 'Away you Johnnie, my dear honey' or 'my fair man' (Bullen), but in the main 'Santi' was sung. Now no one has ever given a real reason, or meaning, for this word; it just appears to be a meaningless name of some sort. I thought so too, until I came across a version giving 'Away you Santa, my dear Anna' and the explanation became clear - the mysterious 'Santi' or 'Santa' being nothing more than the two first syllables or our friend 'Santi-anna' or 'Santa'anna' or, as it was usually written, 'Santiana'!

My first version of Away, Susanna was invariably sung to the 'shanghaied in San Francisco' theme. Charlie Evans, Arthur Spence, Bosun Chenoworth, 'Artie', an A.B. [able bodied seaman] of the New Zealand brigantine Aratapu, and many other shipmates of mine all sang these words. However, I believe that these verses are of comparatively recent date and that they came from a poem (the author of which I have never discovered). Probably some versatile shantyman thought them 'just the job' and spliced them to the old Packet Rat shanty. Nevertheless, they were accepted and sung by hundreds of shantymen in the latter days of sail. Every sailing-ship man I ever knew was acquainted with them.

THE APPRENTICE BOY - Track 3

In 1984 I made it to the Willie Clancy Festival, held in the town of Miltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland. I attended the Singing Workshop that year and heard Róisín White sing this lovely Irish sea song that she learned from the late Joe Holmes. The Apprentice Boy offers a more romantic view of the sailor and is one of my favorite sea songs. It has been recorded by Róisín White on her album The First of My Rambles. In the first line of the fifth verse Róisín sings "bought her gloves" which I though I heard her sing as "bought her doves." Cathal McConnell also recorded this song on one of the earlier Boys of the Lough albums.

THE GRIMSBY LADS - Track 4

This is a trawling song written by John Connolly and Bill Meek.

I reunited the original members of my former band Out of the Rain to record three tracks for this album. This first track we did together is another one of my favorite sea songs, originally learned from the Oxford Book of Sea Songs, edited by Roy Palmer. After recording this song, I obtained an album of John Conolly and Bill Meek singing their song and I noticed that the second line of the last verse was different from the printed version in Palmer's book. I wrote to John Conolly and he said that both Bill Meek and he have a habit of re-visiting songs occasionally and tinkering with them. They had changed that line from "to the fisherman's prayer the breeze sings the amen" to "another trip's over, another day's done" in a later recording.

Black ice (in the 2nd verse) refers to sea ice that is clear enough to show the color of the water underneath and thus nearly invisible and dangerous. The place names in the 3rd verse bear some explaining as well. White Sea is north of Archangel in the Soviet Union. Faeroe refers to the Faeroe Islands, a group of Danish islands (540 square miles) in the North Atlantic, between Iceland and the Shetland Islands. Dogger refers to the Dogger Bank, an extensive sand bank in the central North Sea, between England and Denmark, submerged at a depth of 60-120 ft. The Forties is part of the North Sea, between Scotland and Norway and Bear Island is to the south of Spitsbergen.

Here are notes about this song from a lyric sheet sent to me by Bill Meek and John Conolly:

"This is one of the first songs we ever wrote together...and it is more popular in 1998 than it was over thirty years ago! We have recently received recordings of it from Holland, Germany, Denmark and Poland. It is a simple tribute to the men who did the toughest job in the world...the deep-sea trawler men whose triumphs and disasters were an integral part of our growing up, and whose lives we have tried to chronicle in many of our songs."

And, from Roy Palmer's book:

"Distant water fishing has greatly declined since 1966 when John Conolly and Bill Meek wrote this song, but the skill and hardiness of trawler men remain the same. Both writers were brought up within smell of Grimsby Docks. Conolly, born in 1941, had a grandfather who was a local shipwright. Meek was born in 1937, and his father worked on the docks as a 'lumper' (fish-handler). They set out to write of the trawling industry since they felt that 'the men who did the most dangerous job in the world deserved to be celebrated in song'.

HOOKER JOHN - Track 5

This halyard and capstan shanty has been recorded by Pint & Dale on their album Port of Dreams and by Graeme Knights on his album Echo from Afar. There is also a shanty album from England titled Hooker John that I have not heard. The lyrics I use are the same ones Pint & Dale sing, I think, with the exception of the last verse that I lifted from the Graeme Knights cd. We had fun recording this one, not only because it's a great song but because we all began laughing uncontrollably when one of the chorus singers started singing "Johnny's on the foreskin, yonder, way up yonder."

My sparse liner notes info on the CD comes from the Encyclopedia of Nautical Knowledge by W.A McEwen and A.H. Lewis published by Cornell Maritime Press, Cambridge, Maryland. Their definition of hooker is:

Hooker. (Du. hoeker, fishing-vessel; from hoek, hook) An old-time fishing-boat with one mast, common to Irish and southern English coasts. Any vessel usually fishing with lines and hooks, also termed liner. Sailor's depreciative term for a clumsy, old-fashioned vessel; as the hooker leaks like a basket; often applied fondly; as, we prefer to stay on board the hooker.

Here's a definition from The Oxford Companion to Ships & the Sea, edited by Peter Kemp and published by Oxford University Press, London, New York, Melbourne, 1976:

Hooker, a development of the original ketch, a short, tubby little vessel with main and mizenmasts, originally square-rigged on the main and with a small topsail above a fore-and-aft sail hoisted on a gaff on the mizzen. She usually set two jibs on a high steeved bowsprit. She was a fishing vessel, and probably, as her name suggests, was used mainly for line fishing. She became a distinct type of vessel in her own right, as opposed to the generic ketch, early in the 18th century. The rig was much favoured by Dutch fishing craft. The name is also used, slightly contemptuously, for any vessel when she grows old and has lost her early bloom, or perhaps has come down a bit in the maritime world.

And, finally, as I found out from Pint & Dale, Hooker John is in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas. Here are the notes from Hugill's book:

"Captain Whall gives a verse and chorus called Ooker John in his book Sea Songs and Shanties. From my Barbadian friend Harding [he had the colorful name of Harding the Barbadian Barbarian] I learnt a similar capstan shanty, but he sang Hooker John, and he said that it was still popular in the West Indies (1931). It probably originated as a cotton-stower's song. Whall gives:

O my Mary she's a blooming lass,
Ch: To my Ooker John, my Oo-John,
O my Mary she's a blooming lass,
Ch: To my Ooker John, my Oo-John,

Full Chorus:
Way, fair lady, O way-ay-ay-ay-ay,
My Mary's on the highland,
O yonder's Mary - yonder...

And judging from these words it looks as though, in spite of the Negro tune and the way the refrains are worded, some Scotsman or North Countryman had a hand in this version. The tune of the solo lines is similar to that of Roll the Cotton Down.

THE OCEAN QUEEN - Track 6

I found this sea song in Helen Creighton's book, Songs & Ballads from Nova Scotia. Ms. Creighton collected it from Mr. Ben Henneberry of Devil's Island whose story was that "this boat was so exeptionally fine that nine captains sailed in her as crew, going from Gloucester to the Banks of Georges off Cape Sable, from which they were never heard of again." It's a curious song in that the Ocean Queen herself is not mentioned until the end of the fourth verse and almost no detail is offered about the disaster. What I was drawn to was the description of the ship that the song's narrator is on and the marvelous phrases "where ice congeals like mountains" and "as we go off a-spouting just like a frightened whale"

SALTPETRE SHANTY - Track 7

This capstan shanty is also known as Slav Ho or Slav Oh and comes from the Saltpetre and Guano Trades of the West Coast of South America. My version is melodically much the way it is done by the east coast shanty group The Boarding Party on their recording Fair Winds and a Following Sea, Folk-Legacy Records, 1987. Barry Finn posted a thread about the song on the Mudcat Café Forum back in 1998. The lyrics I sing, in typical shanty man fashion, are my favorite verses from several versions I have heard. I've also heard this shanty on recordings by Pint and Dale and Stormalong John. Local singers Dick Holdstock and Peter Kasin tell me that in England the chorus is sung "oh, roll, rock yer arse, heave 'er high, oh rock her oh roll."

Liner notes about Saltpetre Shanty from the Fair Winds and a Following Sea recording:

"Spike Sennit was his name. He was an able-bodied seaman, much of whose experience had been amassed while serving in the guano-and-saltpetre trade along the west coast of South America. Many sailors had followed that route, carrying cargo that would become fertilizer and other products. Few shanties have been preserved in print that reflect the travails of that less-than-idyllic existence, however, primarily, says Stan Hugill, who got this one from Sennit himself, because not much was printable. We've bowdlerized Hugill's version one step further, in fact, using "flash girls" to replace a Spanish word [puta] that is considerably more coarse than English equivalents such as prostitute.

Then there was Mike O'Rourke, another of Hugill's shipmates, who had shipped in many "Yankee blood boats" -- hard-case sailing ships from which crews would desert and fresh ones be supplied by the medium of shanghailing. O'Rourke's contribution was another shanty from the same part of the world, "Them Gals of Chile," from two of whose verses we adapted lines to add another element to Sennit's grim song. It was verse #4 that came from O'Rourke, however. The reference to "Pedro the Crimp" (essentially a kidnapper) was part of Spike's original. Doping the beer in portside hangouts could lead to drugged sailors who would wake up hours later, only to find themselves at sea in a totally different vessel, having been bought like barrels of salt-horse from procurers like Pedro. Sometimes, in fact, they might end up not at sea at all, but working ashore in such unsavory locales as Las Chinchas, a group of tiny islands off the Peruvian coast.

The tune, like those of many shanties, could have come from almost any source that struck in the shantyman's mind long enough for him to feel like setting words to it. Joanna Colcord pointed out the remarkable similarity between this one (or her version, which is close) and a 16th century German folksong called "Drei Reiter am Thor" ("Three Riders at the Gate"). Nor is it all that far from some American songs such as "Cryderville Jail."

You can find both Sennit's and O'Rourke's songs, by the way, in Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961 and later editions), the undisputed champion of shanty collections, particularly if you want only one. More to the point, however, with a growing stack of recordings of the same finite repertoire, the book offers many lesser-known but equally exciting examples. Find a copy, take a deep breath, and start in on the ones you've never heard."

Notes about Saltpetre Shanty from Stan Hugill's book Shanties from the Seven Seas:

"The shanty I have named Saltpetre Shanty was a great favourite with crews of ships in the Saltpetre and Guano Trades of the West Coast of South America; it is one of four shanties rarely heard in other trades, the other three being Rollocky Randy Dandy O! , Serafina, and The Girls of Chili. They were all well known to Liverpool seamen, but have rarely found their way into print owing to the difficulty of camouflaging them: they were all obscene to a degree, even the refrains and choruses being extremely bawdy. Captain Robinson in The Bellman is the only person who has 'had a go' at titivating them up. As he points out: 'many of these bawdy refrains were nothing more than Sailor John's obscene renderings of snatches of "Dago" phrases picked up in the Chilian ports.'

I had this one from Spike Sennit, an old sailing-ship A.B. [able bodied seaman]. It was used at the capstan."

The late East Coast shanty singer Barry Finn wrote a few additional verses to this (one of his favorite shanties). I’ve noted Barry’s verses in brackets.

BOUND TO AUSTRALIA - Track 8

Concertina and harmony vocal: Ricky Rackin

Another song from Stan Hugill's book Shanties from the Seven Seas. I changed the first line of the song from "I'm leaving Old England.." to "I'm leaving Old Ireland..." because I felt that the chorus words had an Irish feel to them, especially the "Sure I'm a man..." in the last line of the chorus. I tend not to sing in dialect so I'm not singing exactly what is in Hugill's book. I also left out the last two verses.

Of course there's the well-known song Jock Stewart that contains the same chorus. Bound to Australia also uses a different melody, a variant of Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.

Here's what Hugill has to say about Bound to Australia:

An old song known to most Irish and Liverpool-Irish seamen was Bound to Australia, sung to the air I'm a man ye don't meet every day - a variant of Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms. It was not a true forebitter perhaps, although it was sung in the dog-watches in the old sailing ships; but I never heard that it was used as a capstan shanty until I read in Doerflinger's Shantymen and Shantyboys that according to Captain P. Tayleur it was often sung by seamen in the Australian Emigrant Trade as the 'hove in their mooring lines' and 'brought the anchor to the hawse-pipe'. Captain Tayleur calls his song The First of the Emigrants and in the main it is the same as mine, which I had from old Paddy Griffiths. Gold was found in Australia in 1851 and from that time onwards for the rest of the century sailing ships packed to the scuppers with emigrants and gold-seekers headed for the 'Colonies'. No doubt it lent itself to being a fine capstan song.

BILLY O’SHEA - Track 9

I first heard about this shanty on the Mudcat Café Forum. As described in the thread, East Coast singer Dan Milner only had the first verse of Billy O'Shea and recorded a version of it fleshing it out with standard "floating" shanty verses. Full versions of this shanty did turn up. One of them was recorded by the Whigamaleeries on their cassette Tall Ships, sung by Pete MacNab, and English singer Graeme Knights was kind enough to provide me with the melody and lyrics he had for the song (Billy O'Shea is on his newly released album Echo from Afar). As it turned out I liked the melody used by Dan Milner better but the lyrics I sing are compiled from all the versions I found. According to Pete MacNab's post in the thread on Billy O'Shea shown above there was originally no full chorus. By the way, I highly recommend Graeme Knight's recording Echo from Afar. In addition to some great singing by Graeme the album features a stellar chorus that includes Johnny Collins, Dave Webber and Anni Fentiman, among others.

Although one group, The Harry Brown Shantymen of Bristol, claim the song was collected from an old singer the consensus is that Billy O’Shea is a modern song, probably composed sometime in the 1960s.

FIRING THE MAURETANIA - Track 10

Lead: Stephen Canright

I first heard this sung by Stephen Canright at one of the Hyde Street Pier shanty sings in San Francisco. Stephen got the song from the cassette tape A Beautiful Life by the group Bermuda Quadrangle. David Jones, one of the singers in the group thinks the song was written by Redd Sullivan who, along with his partner Martin Windsor, ran the very successful Troubadour Folk Club in London from the early 1960s to the 1980s. Jeff Warner, who sings the lead on this song, agrees with David. The times, 4 to 8, 8 to 12, and 12 to 4 refer to the 4 hours on and 4 hours off shifts of the stokers. In their liner notes the Bermuda Quadrangle group says "The Fireman's Lament" or "Firing the Mauretania" was entered in English shantyman Stan Hugill's "The Bosun's Locker" column in Spin, The Folksong Magazine, Volume 1, # 9, 1962. Hugill's notes read: "Words collected and arranged by Redd Sullivan of the Thameside 4, sometime fireman himself. Tune: variant of "Paddy Works on the Railway." Further research has shown that Redd Sullivan composed the song himself.

Stephen Canright, who is also the Chief Curator for the Maritime Museum in San Francisco, sent me the following notes on Firing the Mauretania:

"When I first heard this song on a tape by the Bermuda Quadrangle, I was intrigued with the idea of a stoking shanty. It seemed reasonable that a rhythmic song might ease the labor of shoveling coal into the furnaces of a big steamer. Stoking was individual work, but a song might give the lads a lilt to work to and a chance to bitch about their lives. I doubt, however, that this was actually ever sung in the boiler room of the Mauretania, especially as it turns out that she was converted to oil-fire by 1921.

The passenger liner R.M.S. Mauretania, launched in 1906, was the most famous ship of her time. Until 1930 she ran for Cunard between Southampton, England and New York City, carrying 2,500 passengers and a crew of 800. For twenty years she was the fastest passenger steamer on the Atlantic run. At almost 800 feet in length, she was for a time the largest ship in the world. Her sister-ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 with heavy loss of life, helping to bring the United States into the First World War. The Mauretania was finally scrapped in 1935.

The Mauretania was a turbine steamer. She had twenty-five steam boilers, most with eight furnaces or fire boxes, for a total of 192 furnaces. The fires were fed by stokers shoveling coal, each man tending four furnaces, so that forty-eight stokers worked each watch. The stokers worked four hours on and eight hours off, whenever the ship was at sea. It was a hard and dirty job, with gaunt, black-faced men laboring like imps in the bowels of Hell. Only by about 1930 had all of the big Atlantic liners adopted oil fire, ending this backbreaking labor."

Mauretania Statistics
* Gross Tonnage - 31,938 tons
* Dimensions - 232.31 x 26.82m (762.2 x 88.0ft)
* Number of funnels - 4
* Number of masts - 2
* Construction - Steel
* Propulsion - Quadruple-screw
* Engines - Steam turbines by Wallsend Slipway Co. Ltd.
* Service speed - 25 knots
* Builder - Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Wallsend-On-Tyne
* Launch date - 20 September 1906
* Passenger accommodation - 563 1st class, 464 2nd class, 1,138 3rd class

JACKIE TAR - Track 11

This sea song bears the same name and uses the same melody as the hornpipe Jackie Tar. There are some other examples of this sort of thing. Local Bay Area singer Riggy Rackin sings a song titled Off to California to the tune of the hornpipe Off to California.

Every verse ends with the phrase “with his trousers on.” At the end of the 18th century, when most men wore knee-breeches, sailors (apart from officers) wore trousers, and had been doing so for some fifty years. (Incidentally, the revolutionary French sans-culottes were so called, not because they went about with bare posteriors, but because they, too, wore trousers in preference to breeches). A sailor could easily roll up his wide trousers when decks had to be scrubbed, or seas were breaking over them. The trousers (usually spelled "trowsers" at the time) were often stained with the Stockholm tar used on the standing rigging, and "tarry trousers" were thus the unmistakable badge of the sailor."

ROLLER BOWLER - Track 12

I first heard of this song from Barry Finn who got it from Polish shanty singer Marek Siurawski. I had also heard that Shay Black sang it too but with a full chorus. I heard Shay's version when he, Peter Kasin, myself, Skip Henderson, and Jim Nelson sang some shanties for the dedication of the new MUNI (local light rail) F-Line which ends up a block away from Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco. Shay Black told me that he used to sing Roller Bowler when he lived in Liverpool and was singing with the band Stormalong John. You can hear Shay singing the song on Stormalong John's cd Liverpool, a re-release of songs from earlier cassette tapes they had made. There is no indication on the Liverpool cd of who is in the band but there's no mistaking Shay's distinctive voice and he confirmed that it was indeed he on that recording. There is also a recording of Roller Bowler sung by Shay Black on a cd of a French sea music festival, Les Musiques De La Fete: Brest '92. It's too bad Barry Finn never has recorded it because he does a wonderful job on it.

I had fun with the "timme!" yells in the chorus. I sing the yells as solo lines simply because I like the way it sounds - it's not traditional to do it that way. I understand that Stan Hugill thought very highly of this shanty although he certainly doesn't say so in his book Shanties from the Seven Seas:

"Another shanty which uses the expression 'high-rig-a-jig' is the capstan song Roller Bowler which appears to me to be another of the Negro-Irish type of sailor work-song. I picked up my version out in Trinidad. Sharp's version, the only one in print until now, seems to be a Liverpool shanty although he collected it in Bristol, I think. Anyhow it is definitely a shanty that was sung aboard of the West Indian Sugar and Rum Traders, since it was well known by most of my West Indian shipmates. Sharp gives an introductory chorus."

ILO MAN - Track 13

I learned this capstan shanty from the recording Shipshape & Harry Fashion by the English shanty group The Harry Browns of Bristol. Unfortunately their album has no liner notes to speak of. Another version can be found on Bob Webb's album Bank Trollers, Songs of the Sea:

"This capstan shanty, a variant of Huckleberry Hunting, was sung by William Fender of Barry, Wales, who quit the sea in 1900. Bob Walser unearthed it from the James Madison Carpenter Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. It begins with the customary "hitch," the wild yell that Stan Hugill called "the very essence of the shantyman's art"."

Stan Hugill, in his book Shanties from the Seven Seas also gives a version of the shanty Huckleberry Hunting that he calls We'll Ranzo Way:

"Another shanty which mentions our hero Ranzo is the one variously known as We'll Ranzo Way, The Wild Goose Shanty, or Huckleberry Hunting. This was sung at windlass and capstan, but Doerflinger gives it as halyards and pumps - in other words it appears to have been used for every shipboard job with perhaps the exception of tacks and sheets, and hand-over hand!

Davis & Tozer [in Sailors' Songs or "Chanties" - 1910] give a theme about 'Minnie and the Wild Geese' which has not an authentic ring, appearing to me as being entirely composed and not merely camouflaged.

Bullen gives one verse only, 'Oh, what did yer give for yer fine leg o' mutten?' Terry says that the verse about 'huckleberry hunting' was rarely omitted, but he never heard this theme further developed. Whall, Sharp, Doerflinger, and Miss Colcord all give this verse. Terry gives the shanty as windlass and capstan, Whall doesn't state its usage, Sharp gives it as capstan, but Miss Colcord, like Doerflinger, gives it as halyards. Bullen also presents it as windlass and capstan.

Most forms indicate a Negro origin, as far as the tune and refrains are concerned, but the words of the solos savour of a Down East or Nova Scotia source.

Most versions refer to the 'Wild Goose nation.' This mysterious race of people often crops up in shantydom and also in nigger minstreldom, and many theories have been put forward regarding its origin, none, I'm afrain, very convincing. Doerflinger maintains that in minstreldom, the phrase refers to Southern or Indian-inhabited country. Miss Colcord rather fancies Ireland as the source, since she has discovered that the phrase 'Wild Goose nation' was used as a poetical name for the Irish, in particular for the Irish Guards who fought the French in the wars of 1748, and refers the reader to Kipling's poem, 'The Irish Guards.' Then again the Irish connection with the phrase may come from an historical incident which happened when George III, I believe, desired the Irish regiments to swear allegiance to the English flag. The flag was hoisted on a hill and the regiments had two alternatives - either to pass the flag on the left and thereby swear allegiance, or to march to the right and downhill to the waiting French frigates which were to carry them to France and exile. Many regiments accepted the latter course and became mercenaries in Europe, never being allowed to return to their wives and children or their native heath. This going into exile is often referred to as 'The Flight of the Wild Geese.' But all this is rather far removed from the sailor's shanty - unless it came to the shanty by way of an Irish forebitter, and to my knowledge no forebitter, Irish or otherwise, includes such a phrase.

Some authorities seek further afield and suggest that it may mean Ashanti or some other Guinea Coast locality, homeland of the original Negro slaves of America.

MORNING SHANTY - Track 14

This song was composed by local singer Sharyn Dimmick on May 26, 1986 while taking the Anacortes ferry to Victoria after a late evening singing party at the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle, Washington.

I originally recorded this song as a solo singing lead myself but I was not satisfied with how it sounded. I thought it might sound nice with Suzanne Friend singing lead with an all women's chorus. The chorus lineup would include Marla Fibish, Patrice Haahn, Sharyn Dimmick, and perhaps one or two other singers. Then Suzanne announced that she would be moving to Eureka, California almost immediately and I had to rethink everything. There was no time to schedule rehearsal sessions and Suzanne's imminent move meant that the Out of the Rain songs (The Grimsby Lads and Time Ashore is Over) needed to be finished as soon as possible so we recorded Morning Shanty at the same time with Marla, Patrice, and myself as the chorus. Suzanne's interpretation of Morning Shanty is a bit different timing-wise from Sharyn's original version in a couple of places.

TIME ASHORE IS OVER - Track 15

I learned this song from San Francsico Bay Area singer Dick Holdstock. When I contacted author Bill Meek (via John Conolly) to get his permission to record he sent me a lyric sheet that was a bit different from what I had learned. I had glanced at it and thought that I had the correct lyrics probably based on looking at the first two verses but Bill often re-visits his songs and re-writes words and phrases. John Conolly tells me that what I am singing on my album is very close to how Bill originally wrote the lyrics.

Bill wrote this "shanty" for the Fishing Heritage Centre production Here's to the Grimsby Lads. Once at sea, fishermen were a world away from wives and families, and just like those back home, they too had their worries.