Songs of wooden ships and iron men
Published 1:00 pm Wednesday, August 4, 2004
A sea journey awaits even the most landlocked landlubber, when Pint and Dale weigh anchor.
The ocean voyage is an evening of sea chanteys sung at this week’s Concert in Waterfront Park, with musical duo William Pint and Felicia Dale.
The pair evoke the big sailing ships of the 18th and 19th centuries with tunes that were the sailors’ work songs, music that reflects the rough-hewn life that was the seafarer’s lot.
“People ask me why I want to sing all these ‘men songs,’ songs of men, songs that men sing,” Dale said. “But it’s a fabulous form of music.”
The chantey developed as a call-and-response tune sung while sailors went about the hard work of running a ship.
Strongly rhythmic, the chanteys helped synchronize the particular task at hand. Sailors who had climbed the mast would need to coordinate as they leaned over the yardarm to grab the tons of wet sail. If a song helped them move in unison, then the music served a crucially important purpose shaping the tasks.
And the work formed music that was loud, bluff, hearty and to the point.
“This wasn’t work where you’d have long elaborate songs, because they would be hanging up there in terrible weather,” Pint said.
The chantey man – the song leader – was a respected individual on a ship. He had to be loud enough to be heard over the wind and waves, and he had to be able to improvise.
“He had to have the right song for the right job,” Pint said. “He had to be able to keep those guys focused. And if the work went long, he couldn’t just run out of verses.”
The clever chantey man might even throw in a verse or two about life aboard the particular ship they sailed in to engage the men.
The popular wisdom was that one good chantey man was “worth 10 men on the line.”
Versions of the chantey can be found in many countries where the big ships sailed, Pint and Dale say. Today, a French, Scandinavian or German tune might echo other countries’ songs because the sailors shared music in port.
“That’s why there are so many versions of one tune,” Pint said, “and that’s why you’ll recognize the lines from song to song.”
Homesick blues
The songs also served as an outlet for the homesickness and yearnings of men who might be parted from loved ones for many years at a stretch.
And the partings weren’t always voluntary; many a man woke with a blinding hangover to find himself “shanghaied,” having been ripped unceremoniously from the sweetheart’s embrace he’d fancied the night before to be tossed into the hold of a ship headed for open waters.
“And if a ship was well-known to be a bad one, it wouldn’t be easy to find a crew,” Dale said. “Anyone could find themselves on board – farmers, tailors, someone who’d gotten in debt.”
For the homesick sailors, music was an outlet.
In the evening, someone might break out a fiddle or a banjo to accompany songs called “fore bitters,” named for the spot on deck before the mast where the men would gather to sing.
While steamboats took the wind out of the sails of the big ships – a gradual process that trailed into the 20th century, Pint says – the sea chantey got a new lease on life from a devoted practitioner, Stan Hugill, who died in 1994.
“He worked as a chantey man before World War I,” Pint said. “We met him and sang with him. He collected the songs from the guys who were old at that time.”
The collection, “Chanteys From the Seven Seas” is the bible for the contemporary songster.
The music has outlasted the demise of the sailing ships because of the universal appeal of the lively songs, Dale and Pint believe.
The pair have a more personal reason to love the music, as well; the songsters, who are also life partners, found each other through singing chanteys.
Pint, a Northwest vocalist and musician was introduced to the chantey at open mics sponsored by Victory Music magazine in Tacoma, events that Dale – who was, she says, more motorcycle rider than musician – attended.
“He heard me singing along,” she said. “He said, ‘that sounds nice.’ It all kind of naturally evolved, our role as friends and as sweetie-pies.”
Pint and Dale, as the pair styled themselves, took their seafaring act on tour, not only to the seacoast places like Mystic, Conn., where one may still find a tall ship or two, but also to landlocked venues in the heartland of Kansas and Iowa.
And, even inland, the welcome the music receives is warm, they say.
“The songs are about what’s going on beneath the surface,” Dale said. “The themes are timeless: danger on the seas, separation from loved ones.
“Those themes still resonate.”
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The musical duo of William Pint and Felicia Dale perform their unique take on sea chanteys, work songs and other songs of the sea, 7-8:30 p.m. Aug. 4 at Waterfront Park. Free. Information: 842-2306.
