Shantyman and Storyteller Captain Daniel Quinn Returns to Lead December 5th Song Circle!

Please join us on Thursday, December 5th, for a fun and festive shanty sing with Captain Daniel (Dano) Quinn. Dano, who now captains the SS Legacy, spends a lot of time off shore, but will landing again here in Port Townsend to lead our December song circle. Not to be missed! So much fun! His stories are a hoot! Be sure to bring your family and invite your friends!

Here is a repost of Deborah Bach's Three Sheets NW blog post from November 2, 2012 about Dano Quinn and his CD Salty Stories and Tall Tales. Click on the title link below to hear the audio of Hawaii Blues, a maritime story that Dano authored and performed live at the 2011 Stories of the Sea.


Salty stories and tall tales on Dano Quinn CD 

by Deborah Bach

"Perennial audience favorite Dan “Dano” Quinn is a four-time winner of the annual Stories of the Sea competition. Dan “Dano” Quinn grew up with a father who loved to tell jokes and ballad-style stories, sometimes in a faux Cockney accent. 

So it’s not surprising that Quinn grew up to become a storyteller himself. The 55-year-old ship captain is a four-time winner of Seattle’s annual Stories of the Sea competition, captivating audiences with his comical, ribald rhyming poems of hijinks on the high seas. 

Quinn is now sharing his tall tales on a broader scale through his recently released CD “Slightly Salty! Sea Stories, Tall Tales and Outright Lies.” The dozen original stories, written over the past decade, tell of shipwrecks and pirates, of green young sailors and scallywags — good for listening during a road trip or ideally, Quinn says, onboard on a chilly evening while enjoying a rum toddy. 

If Quinn’s delivery seems effortless, it’s likely because he’s long loved telling jokes and eventually found his way to rhyming poems. 

“I just always thought it was a fun way to tell stories,” he says. 

 

A lifelong reader, Quinn was inspired by English poet and writer John Masefield, whose best-known works include “Sea-Fever” (“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky … “), and Robert Service, an England-born writer who lived in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush and became known as “the Bard of the Yukon.” 

Reading the two poets’ works gave Quinn the idea to give rhyming storytelling a try, and Stories of the Sea provided the impetus to begin writing. His stories often start with the kernel of a joke or anecdote he’s heard somewhere. If it’s not maritime-themed, it soon will be. Embellishment, as the CD title makes clear, is a given. 

While there’s an “element of truth” in all his stories, Quinn says, “If I just told a straight story, it’s not going to be as humorous.” 

Several poems on the CD include nods to the Northwest, including “Changes,” an wry lament on the gentrification of Seattle’s waterfront and surrounding areas. 

“The folks that thought the fleet so quaint when they moved into the ‘hood now want those rusty hulks to move; it’s for the common good,” Quinn recites. “There’s 20 different restaurants and a lot of little shops, but no place to get your welding done or fix a dinged-up prop. 

“I thought I saw a little place where I could get some bait, but it’s just too damned expensive when it’s called a sushi plate.” 

The one serious poem on the CD is “Yearning,” in which Quinn speaks of the powerful pull of the sea: “They say you can never go back but I sure would like to try, to cross an ocean under sail again before I die.” 

It’s a tug that endures for Quinn, who is currently the captain of Wilderness Discoverer, a 76-passenger cruise ship that travels to quiet anchorages in southeast Alaska. He grew up in Connecticut and spent 15 years working on tall ships before moving to Seattle with his wife and their son. He’s crossed the Pacific several times, sailed through the Panama Canal and on the Great Lakes. 

And after 35 years of working on ships, Quinn says, it still hasn’t gotten old. “I still love what I do,” he says. 

“I still think it’s a pretty romantic lifestyle. I get paid to do something I enjoy doing. You can’t beat that.” 

“Slightly Salty! Sea Stories, Tall Tales and Outright Lies” is available at Captain’s Nautical Supplies in Seattle or by emailing Dano Quinn at danmast3@gmail.com. The cost is $12, plus $3 for shipping. Quinn is also available for parties and events."

Join us for Our Sing Shanties July 4th Celebration & Song Circle with Mark Olson

Join us for our July 4th Celebration and Song Circle with Mark Olson. The theme of the evening is Singing Shanties Aboard American Ships. Come have fun with us - sing a song, request a song, or pass - our motto is "singin' is encouraged, but knot required." This song circle is also a community potluck. Bring your favorite dish, bring friends. Win prizes! Coffee and tea are provided. Songbooks available. Enjoy Port Townsend's fireworks display following our gathering.

Christmas at Sea - I

"For most of the nineteenth century, Thanksgiving outranked Christmas as New England's premier holiday. On shipboard, festivities usually centered on food, sometimes limited to the captain's table, sometimes available to all hands. As Christmas became popular, families on whalers reproduced the on-shore celebration by decorating the cabin, hanging stockings, exchanging gifts, and eating well.

Good cheer sometimes spilled over to the crew. On the John P. West in 1882, Sallie Smith made popcorn balls to help her husband's men celebrate Christmas. William B. Whitecar, who spent several Christmases on a New Bedford whaler, wrote that one year the captain observed the day by sending a cheese to the crew. Another year, there was no change in the day's routine. Yet another year, all hands received mince pie.

The last whaling ship left New Bedford in 1925.

Crews were resourceful about providing their own festivities for holidays and other moments when a celebration seemed in order. They toasted each other, sang and fired guns. Whaleboat races were common on the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, especially when two whaleships met. But despite these efforts, accounts of holidays at sea, especially Christmas, have a recurring theme - how much the seafarer misses his family."

An excerpt from the Whaling Museum's "Life Aboard" page, an overview of North American whaling and life aboard ship: Holidays and Festivities on a Whaleship.

Some sailors had something to flee, nothing to leave behind or no one dear to bid adieu, but many left behind families, loved ones, friends and all that was pleasant and familiar to make what living they could crewing aboard cargo ships and whalers, not know if they would ever see them again. Filled with hopes and longings to be home for the holidays, the following two songs poignantly express their yearnings and prayers as they were homeward bound and the fate of others to spend their Christmas at sea.

Does anyone have the music for this forebitter by Ann Matthews titled Christmas Shanty?

Christmas Shanty

Look lively lads, haul on those ropes
At last we're homeward bound
With a following wind we have high hopes
To be home before Christmas comes around.

CHORUS: Pray God fill the sail with a favourable gale
Give us fine fast running seas
And we'll make it home for Christmas boys
To our wives and our families.

We've sailed across the seven seas
Such sights we all have seen
But now we long for our families
To tell them where we've been.

Around the world we all did roam
Many girls in many ports
But now at last we're headed for home
And our wives are in our thoughts.

And in our last few ports of call
When we've had our runs ashore
We've sought out gifts for one and all
And who could ask for more.

So weigh the anchor, set those sails
Don't slack along the way
With this good wind, unless luck fails
We'll be home for Christmas day.

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard and they cut the naked hand,
The decks were like a slide where a seaman scarce could stand,
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea,
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee,

They heard the surf a'roaring 'fore the breaking of the day,
But t'was only with the peep of light we saw how ill she lay,
We tumbled every hand on deck, instanter, with a shout,
We gave her the main topsail and stood-by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North,
All day we hauled the frozen sheets and got no further forth,
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared,
But with every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard,
So's we saw the cliffs and houses and the breakers running high,
And the Coastguard, in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs, as white as ocean foam,
The good, red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore home,
The windows sparkled clear and the chimneys volleyed out,
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with mighty jovial cheer,
For it's just that I should tell you how, of all days of the year,
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn',
And the house above the Coastguard's was the house where I was born.

'Tis well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My Mother's silver spectacles, my Father's silver hair,
And well I saw the fire-light, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing 'round the china plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea,
And, oh, the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high-sea light, the dark began to fall,
"All hands to loose t'gallant sails!"; I heard the Captain call,
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it!"; our First Mate, Jackson, cried,
"It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson."; he replied.

She staggered to her bearings but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward, just as though she understood,
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board - but me,
As they saw her nose again, pointed handsome out to sea,
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home - and my folks were growing old.

 Words: R.L. Stevenson. Music: Tom Lewis
(Recorded by Tom Lewis on 360° All Points of the Compass)

Join us for December 6 Song Circle with Award-winning Storyteller, Captain Dano Quinn

Climb aboard with award-winning storyteller Captain Dano Quinn as he leads us in song and maybe spins one of his colorful and original seafaring yarns, collected over 30 years at sea! 

When asked to share his bio with us, Dano writes, "I was born at a very young age, in fact I was an infant at the time, to two parents; my Mother & Father... I grew up in Mystic, CT. I fell in the water while crabbing when I was 5 years old and never came back out! I'm a licensed Captain of both sail and motor vessels and have been working aboard ships for over 30 years. The first half of my career was all in tall ships so I come by my shanty singing honestly. I'm also a story teller with a unique spin. I recite original humorous sea stories in ballad style. I've performed at the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria for the past 6 years, I've won the Seattle Maritime Festival "Stories of the Sea" Contest 4 times, and have also won the Northwest Folklife Festival Liar's Contest."

For more about Dano Quinn, here's the link to a recent article about Dano on Three Sheets Northwest by Deborah Bach: Salty stories and tall tales on Dano Quinn CD.

Please share this link and flyer with your family and friends. Holidays are a busy time, so be sure to save this date, Thursday, December 6 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. to join us at the Uptown Community Center for a fun and festive gathering. Please bring your favorite holiday finger foods and sweet treats to enjoy with hot cider, coffee and tea. 

Already thinking about your Christmas gift list? Consider giving our Sing Shanties and Songs About the Sea songbook as a very special gift from Port Townsend. We will have them available for purchase.