Wooden Boat Festival Sea Chantey Song Circle

Reminder: In September, we will not be having our regularly scheduled, first Thursday of the month, Sing Shanties Song Circle at the Maritime Center. We encourage you to participate in one or both scheduled, Friday and Saturday at the WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL, September 7 and 8. Held in the Marina Room at Point Hudson Marina at 8:00 p.m. Wayne Palsson is the presenter both nights. Free.

Asleep in the Deep

My mom knew the song that the elderly gentleman sang (the wonderful bass who said he had found it in his father's piano bench) at our August Song Circle. I recorded him and using what mom told me and what I recorded, reconstructed this to be the true song as it was sung:

Asleep in the Deep

Arthur J. Lamb

Stormy the night and the waves roll high,

Bravely the ship doth ride,

Hark! while the lighthouse bell's solemn cry,

Rings o'er the sullen tide.


There on the deck see two lovers stand,

Heart to heart beating, and hand to hand;

Tho' death be near, she knows no fear,

While at her side is one of all most dear.

Chorus:

Loudly the bell in the old tower rings,
Bidding us list to the warning it brings:
Sailor, take care! Sailor, take care!
Danger is near thee. Beware! Beware! 
Beware! Beware!


What of the storm when the night is o'er?
There is no trace or sign,
Save where the wreckage hath strewn the shore,
Peaceful the sun doth shine.


But when the wild, raging storm did cease,
Under the billows two hearts found peace,
No more to part, no more of pain,
The bell may now tell its warning in vain.


Chorus:
Loudly the bell in the old tower rings,
Bidding us list to the warning it brings:
Sailor, take care! Sailor, take care!
Danger is near thee. Beware! Beware!
Beware! Beware!

Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep,
   So beware! beware! 


Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep,
   So beware! beware!




Posted by Mark Olson
The Longwinded Shantyman

T'was a great night for singin'... and sailin'!

Little did I know, when I conservatively set out 40 chairs, that last night's Song Circle would have the second highest number of attendees since we started last January! Although one of the most spectacular summer evenings of the season with ample opportunities to enjoy other venues, including attending the Concert at the Dock next door and walking local beaches, seventy-five folks gathered in the Maritime Meeting Room to sing shanties along with the Shift Sailors from Whidbey Island. We had a number of first-time visitors hailing from Seattle, Portland, from the East Coast and Canada... who arrived by car and by boat.

Such a memorable and rousing sing-along to "What do we do with a Drunken Sailor", which was requested by a young boy who came with his father. And as we took turns going around the circle and singing, the beautiful Schooner Adventuress sailed back and forth in front of the Maritime Center on Admiralty Inlet, much to our delight.

August 2 Song Circle with the Shifty Sailors!

Echo's Voice

When Every Thumb was a Marlinespike

The Longwinded Shantyman

A Spontaneous Song Circle.
Copyright 2012 by Cheryl Jones

     My dog Echo’s first experience with a crab was when one latched onto her upper lip after her inquisitive nose brought it within range of the crustacean’s snapping pincers. Echo’s frantic barking alerted me to her predicament. The sight of the crab bobbing with the rhythm of her baying was made even more hilarious by the repeat of Echo’s indignant yelping echoing off the cliffs bordering the opposite shore. The silly girl thought the sound was another dog, and split her attention between barking at the distant hound mocking her and the evil red rock that had reared up and bit her.

      What was a great laugh then was actually quite instructive when you stop to think about it. What if Echo’s situation had occurred during the age of sail? What if it had been fully dark out? Or foggy? What could Echo’s voice have accomplished for a mariner of old? Back then, the demise of most ships wasn’t the sea, it was the shore. A sailing instructor I once trained under was fond of saying, “Rocks are hard, water is wet, and the wind will blow where it will”. With those three truths in mind we can begin to form a picture of what the past sailors had to contend with in order to keep their vessels afloat. A traditional sailing ship didn’t have radar, or a spotlight, so what to do to pierce the gloom? Many tricks were employed, but the most common was to use echo’s voice to literally hear the distant shore.

Sonic Ranging in the Age of Sail

      In dry air, sound travels approximately one mile every five seconds. With that in mind, if a loud enough noise was created aboard a fogbound vessel that lay two miles from a rocky shore, the resulting sound waves would radiate outward, echoing off the danger ten seconds later, and then arrive back at the ship ten seconds after that. A navigator hearing an echo after twenty seconds, even if blindfolded would say, “The shore is two miles away.” But how could that sailor first produce a sound loud enough to remain audible for more than a quarter of a minute on a foggy night?

Firing blanks from the privateer Lynx's carronades.
Copyright 2012 Cheryl Jonesion

      It is an interesting historical fact that cannons and swivel guns were used for navigational sonic ranging more often than they were for hostilities. There was no need to expend shot. The gunner would fire a blank charge; just as the sail training vessels do now during mock battles. The shape of the echo would tell a great deal about the invisible object. Imagine the audible difference between a tree-lined shore, a sheer cliff, and a rugged mountain. All produce different reflections - and a sweeping shoreline produced them at different intervals. This proved a highly accurate method of gathering navigational data and is how the original charts of Puget Sound were created. If a vessel were close enough to the object of concern/interest then there was no need to expend black powder. A found object, such as a conch shell, could trumpet a cry loud enough to produce the necessary echo. In closer quarters hand clapping and even human voice were resorted to.

  
      In modern times I have tried all of these methods and found that they work astonishingly well. You can try it for yourself. Go from room to room in your house and in each close your eyes and clap your hands. Listen to the different size of each room - the hard, bright walls in the bathroom and kitchen, the soft quiet of the bedroom. Watch and listen intently during the next thunderstorm, or better yet, the next time you are boating close your eyes and sing a shanty. Perhaps a voice will join you from far away - echo’s voice. Perhaps that is what the sailors of old heard singing back from the rocks, and in their desperate loneliness spun the tales of the sirens. 

Mark Olson

Shanties as Oral History

When Every Thumb was a Marlinspike

The Longwinded Shantyman

Photo by Rande Gjerstad - The children still gather to listen

  My next-door-neighbor Earl is 98 years old. Earl tells a story of breaking his arm when he was a boy. He remembers that day vividly because the trip to the doctor was his very first ride in a car. Imagine that, Earl’s parents, just one generation back in time, had grown up without ever seeing cars. In that very recent past, most of the world could not afford a cart, much less a horse. It would be a banner day indeed to travel by coach. This situation must have impacted people’s world view tremendously. What truly mattered, the “scope” of our ancestor’s existence, was the distance that could be traveled in half a day, on foot - then you must turn around, if you were to safe at home by nightfall. That truth scaled the size of communities and shaped our collective mindset. A sad fact was that a good portion of the population was illiterate - what was beyond the horizon could not travel to you in the form of a book.

  In this world walked, (or rode) the travelers. Those men moving from inn to lodge, fort to garrison, carrying news, language and songs. What must have those rare bards been like to those with an experience spanning a mere 30 miles? The maps, stories, strange new words and songs they would bring would be as memorable as Earl’s first ride in that car. The traveler might have even seen a city, or a snow-topped mountain - things almost impossible to believe.

  Now, imagine a sailor coming into the village. He is not a traveler on horseback, bringing news from hundreds of leagues distant. No, this strange man is telling stories of the far side of the world. He speaks casually of people of different colors, of mountains that smoke, of salt water without end. At first you think him mad, but the elders of the village say others like him have come this way before, with similar stories, words and songs.

  And that is the crucial point: reinforcement. Everything out of his mouth is memorable and will be repeated, everywhere he goes. Your village may die out, victim of a killer plague - your whole world, its unique words, customs, and language, destroyed in a few months, but not the sailor’s. His world is everywhere. His words are sprinkled all around the globe, waiting for a parallel development to again push that term to the fore, reinforcing it yet again. Or perhaps with some expressions the continuity will never be lost and people will never stop using them, we will just forget their origins.

  I wonder if his songs will ever die? Will the tunes he ground out to pass the time while on watch stay with us over the centuries? Will there come a day when folks gather in a circle and remember the first world traveler, his words and his stories of far-away places? Maybe the leader of the circle will keep track of the time on an instrument named after those long lonely hours our first shantyman spent on deck, watching the sea and sky…

Who knows?

Mark Olson

A True(ish) Story - Harbo & Samuelsen

In Brooklyn, New York,
at the turn of the century,
Lived two young Norwegians
so brave and so bold,
Frank Samuelsen only halfway
through his twenties,
George Harbo had just become
thirty years old.

Now, Harbo had spent all his life on the water,
he shipped in square riggers while barely a lad.
His partner likewise was no stranger to workin',
No matter the task he gave all that he had.

Chorus
“We'll see you in France
or we'll see you in Heaven,”
cried Harbo and Samuelsen out on the bay.
Two hardy young oystermen after adventure,
no one believed they could row all the way.

Many men had attempted to cross the Atlantic,

in small wooden boats that were driven by sail.

Those that succeeded were welcomed as heros,

but many there were who did nothing but fail.

Then a rich publisher offered a challenge
that men in a vessel no matter the size
could not make the crossin' without steam or canvas,
and ten thousand dollars he named as the prize.

Now dredgin' up oysters by hand is no picnic,
and these two young fellas were tough as a whip.
Said Frank, “If we row only four miles an hour,
in fifty-four days we could finish the trip.”

Obtaining a sponsor
they started their training;
they ordered a dory made of cedar and oak.
Just eighteen feet long
with a draft of eight inches,
and Fox was the name of their cockleshell boat.

On the sixth day of June,
eighteen-ninety and six,
Messrs. Harbo and Samuelsen started to row.
They took food and water to last until August,
and the newspapers said
they were foolish to go.

From the slip in Manhattan
they rowed through the narrows,
and out for the gulf stream and onto the deep.
Each day they would row
eighteen hours together;

each night they took turns
gettin' three hours sleep.

Well, their stove wouldn't light
so they ate cold provisions.
Their arms and their hands
became swollen and cramped.
The odd passing vessel that took 'em on board,
was their only relief from the toil and the damp.
Then out on the Grand Banks
the weather attacked 'em;
the wind humped the water
into mountainous waves. They lashed down their oars;
they tied on their lifelines
and prayed they were not going
straight to their graves.

A monstrous wave hurdled out of the darkness,
rolling over the Fox and her terrified crew.
Their lifelines held fast
but they lost half their water,
and most of their food it was swept away, too.

They carefully rationed the little remainin',
prayin' for help as they rowed through the brine.
At last a tall ship appeared on the horizon

with the colors of Norway a floating behind.

Well, the Captain could not be convinced
they weren't crazy, but he gave them supplies
and they went on their way.
By the lines on the charts
they were half-way to Europe,
and now they must row sixty miles every day.

The weather held fair,

the two men kept pulling,
all during the days, far into each night.
Then early one morning before the sun rose,
far out on the horizon they spotted a light.

On August the first they made land at St. Mary's,
off the south coast of England
close by Bishop's Rock.
In amazement the townsfolk
gathered down by the water,
where Harbo and Samuelsen barely could walk.

Most men would have stopped then
to bask in the glory,
after having been sunbeaten,
capsized and starved.
But they were both back in their boat
the next morning,
and in less than a week they arrived at Le Havre.

So all of you listening
that yearn for adventure,
like Harbo and Samuelsen so long ago.
Like them be prepared for the task you'll be facin',
they were not only brave
but by God they could row!

© Jerry Bryant - post by Mark Olson

Bryant says of his ballad: "I had to write this song (1985) because it was astounding to me that these two men had accomplished such a feat over 100 years ago and NO ONE REMEMBERED. I am amazed at the perseverance, guts and stamina it took for them to cross the ocean in an 18 foot open boat, without the benefit of freeze-dried food, GPS navigation systems, radios, flashlights, nylon, aluminium, and everything else modern adventurers take for granted. My hope is that my song will allow an awareness of Harbo and Samuelsen's achievement to reach a wide audience, and will provide an inspiration for folks to keep trying no matter what obstacles confront them."

More about George Harbo and Frank Samuelson, the first men to row across the Atlantic Ocean in 1896 without sail or steam, and the book Daring the Sea based on the original logs.