Sea Shanties: Songs to help you work, rest and play

Jun 24 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

We have rock and roll and cellar clubs, but songs of the sea are the true soul music of our city, as will be heard at this year’s shanty festival. David Charters reports

LISTEN to the sounds of the river, you lads and lasses. Hear the moans of the wind, the groans of the timber, the slap of the sails and now the swelling chant of the men.

"Haul away you rolling kings, heave away, haul away; haul away, you'll hear me sing, we're bound for South Australia."

Shanties, those working songs of seamen, are the salt in our culture and the true soul music of this city and its ancient waters.

Everyone knows about Merseybeat and it is still celebrated across the world.

But long before that, we had the songs of the quaysides and the ships that sailed the world from this port. Men climbing the rigging, unfurling the sails or humping the bales, sang as one to the rhythms of their labour.

For generations, wherever the hands of men hardened to the burn of the ropes, our songs joined the great chorus of the seas.

Next month, people from many lands will be able to hear some of them again at a shanty festival, which coincides with the Liverpool start of the Tall Ships’ Race.

The word shanty is developed from the French chanter (to sing).

But there’s a big difference, an immeasurable tide, between knowing something well enough to pass an exam in a sterile classroom and knowing the same thing, but also feeling its passion.

The passion has it every time.

At first this love is not obvious in the jaunty step of the blue-eyed man on the thick- soles, as he passes beneath the sun-glossed, golden ship atop the spire over the sailors’ church.

But a few yards farther on, he picks the sighing melodeon from its leather case. The tune rises, as he stretches and squeezes its orange folds – while the breeze blows in from the river he loves, his river.

Then he sings of Johnny Todd, the foolish sailor, who left his sweetheart behind, allowing another to woo her.

And that passion is there in a slight crack of the voice, when the rival says: "I’ll buy you sheets and blankets, I’ll buy you a wedding ring, you shall have a gilded cradle for to rock your baby in ..."

We all know the tune, used as the Z Cars’ theme and heard before every home match at Everton’s Goodison Park.

But we don’t often hear the sentiment, as poignant in its own way as Liverpool’s "Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone".

This is a song of the sea, sung by Bernie Davis, shantyman of these shores.

Purists will immediately bristle, lest there should be any confusion about songs of the sea, essentially ballads with a nautical theme, and shanties, which are work-songs for the crews of sailing ships. There are also forebitters, songs sung by sailors at leisure.

But there should be tolerance in the celebration of music.

"As long as there’s water in them, they’ll do for me," says Bernie, who is, with Jack Coutts of Stormalong John, hosting Shanties 08, which runs at various waterfront venues between July 18 and July 21.

This is their 10th shanty festival, returning after a two- year gap caused by funding problems. It is hoped now that it will continue as an annual Mersey event.

Bernie, 63, was brought up with music on both sides of his family.

Flautists, mouth-organists, concertina-squeezers, fiddlers and banjo-pluckers, seemed to be everywhere, ready to ambush you with a song and a story.