Class Description

Shanties are the work-songs of sailors on square-rigged sailing vessels. A sea captain said that he’d rather have one shanty man instead of twelve crew members as the work got done in a coordinated way with a gang of sailors hauling up sails winding the capstan, working the manual pumps so that their effort was all done at the same time. Dave now lives in Vermont and sings shanties and songs of the sea. He will teach a selection of songs from his huge repertoire. Participants can choose to sing the whole song or join in on the chorus. All songs have a good singable chorus. Dave is from County Derry in Northern Ireland. When he moved to Liverpool, England, he joined an amazing sea shanty group called Stormalong John and sang with them for several years. The group appeared at the Albert Dock in Liverpool on a regular basis and also at various shanty singing festivals throughout Europe.