Sea songs and ships: every story in the guide

Sea songs and ships: how the stories fit together

This is the index to every story in the guide. It started with one man, the Portsmouth folk singer Shep Woolley, and grew outwards along the lines his songs point to: the Royal Navy he joined as a boy, the ships he sang aboard, the work songs and ballads of the merchant sailors who came before him, and the folk clubs where all of it found an audience again. Each page stands on its own, and each links to the next one along.

The engraving above shows where much of it begins. Thomas Rowlandson drew Portsmouth Point in 1814, the strip of taverns, pawnbrokers and landing stages at the harbour mouth where sailors came ashore with their pay. Fiddlers play, a crew rolls a barrel, a couple embraces on the steps of the Ship Tavern, and the warships ride at anchor behind them. Most of the songs in this guide were sung in rooms like that one, or on the decks beyond it.

Ships and the dockyard

Three of the most famous ships in British history lie within a few hundred yards of each other in Portsmouth, and each tells a different chapter of the navy's story: the Tudor warship that sank in front of her king, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, and the iron-hulled frigate that made both of them obsolete.

• HMS Warrior: HMS Warrior, the first iron-hulled armoured warship: her 1861 debut, fifty years as an oil jetty, the restoration and weddings and events in Portsmouth.
• HMS Victory: HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship: built at Chatham, the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, his death aboard, a century in dry dock and the long restoration.
• Mary Rose: The Mary Rose, Henry VIII's carrack: built in Portsmouth in 1510, sunk in the Solent in 1545, raised in 1982 and now dried and on show in her own museum.
• Historic Dockyard: Portsmouth Historic Dockyard guide: HMS Victory, the Mary Rose, HMS Warrior and HMS M33, Henry VII's 1495 dry dock and the walk from Portsmouth Harbour.

Shanties and sea songs

Merchant sailors sang to haul, heave and pump; navy crews sang for pleasure once the work was done. These pages separate the two traditions, follow individual songs from their first printed sources to the present day, and quote only the traditional words that belong to everyone.

• Sea shanties: What a sea shanty is, the hauling, capstan and pumping types, the shantyman, why the Navy kept quiet, the collectors and the 2021 TikTok revival.
• Wellerman: Wellerman explained: the Weller brothers of Otago, the Billy of Tea and the tonguing, Neil Colquhoun's 1960s find and Nathan Evans's 2021 number one.
• Drunken Sailor: The drunken sailor song: first described in 1839, printed in 1891, sung as a stamp-and-go shanty, its Dorian tune, the traditional verses and its life today.
• Leave Her, Johnny: Leave Her, Johnny, the shanty sailors sang at the pumps as a voyage ended: what it means, its grievance verses, variants, collectors and key recordings.

Life in the Royal Navy

Before the songs came the service itself: how men were brought aboard, often against their will, and what the lower deck did with its few free hours.

• Royal Navy songs: Royal Navy songs explained: why crews worked in silence, the shanties the Navy did allow, the tale of Heart of Oak and the lower-deck songs since 1900.
• Press gang: The press gang explained: how Royal Navy impressment worked, its legal basis, protections and the hot press, why it ended after 1815 and the songs it left.

Singers and the folk revival

The old songs survived because people kept singing them, first in pubs and on quaysides, later in folk clubs, recording studios and, most recently, on phone screens. These are some of the singers who carried them.

• Biography: Shep Woolley's biography: a Midlands miner's son who joined the Navy at fifteen, found folk on HMS Mohawk and went full time in Portsmouth in 1975.
• Discology: Shep Woolley's songs and albums, from Pipe Down and Chips off the Old Bloke to Life in a Blue Suit and Sailors on a Train, and where to hear them now.
• Ewan MacColl: Ewan MacColl from Salford: Theatre Workshop, Dirty Old Town, the Singers' Club, the Radio Ballads and the sea songs he recorded with A. L. Lloyd.
• Fisherman's Friends: The Fisherman's Friends band from Port Isaac: singing on the Platt, the 2010 Island Records album, the 2013 Guildford accident, the films and the musical.

Name mix-ups

A name like Woolley sends some readers to the wrong singer entirely, and an old version of this site carried pages about two of them. They stay, because people still arrive looking for them.

• Sheb Wooley and Ben Colder: Sheb Wooley sang The Purple People Eater and created Ben Colder. His US hits, his roles in Rawhide and High Noon, and why he is not Shep Woolley.
• Spirit: line-up and Future Games: Spirit, the Los Angeles band: the first line-up with Randy California and Ed Cassidy, their biggest hit, the Mercury comeback and Future Games in 1977.