Audio
Charting a Musical Course Through Maritime History
Transcript
You’re listening to “Maritime Voices” from San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. In this episode, we will chart a musical course through maritime history.
We are anchored in maritime history through music and song, an integral part of life at sea. Intrepid sailors sang all day to sustain themselves at sea – their songs today, a musical porthole into maritime history.
For the ordinary sailor on a 19th century deepwater ship, work was grueling and dangerous. Songs were key to survival for sailors who were permitted to sing while they worked, but not allowed to talk. Sea chanteys – believed to be from the French “chanter,” to sing – were traditional work songs sung by sailors to lift their spirits and to maintain rhythm, essential for working as a team.
(Sung, the lines alternating between sung solo and sung as a group)
The winds was foul, all work no play,
Leave her Johnny, leave her,
To Liverpool docks from Frisco Bay,
And it’s time for us to leave her.
The grub was bad, and the wage was low,
Leave her Johnny, leave her,
But now once more ashore we’ll go,
And it’s time for us to leave her.
Created by sailors, chantey lyrics are firsthand accounts of shipboard life. Through chanteys, sailors could air grievances that they could not otherwise voice. A vital source of historical information, the songs of mariners’ lives, dreams, and universal human emotions transport us to another place and time.
San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park preserves our maritime heritage through the rich and varied music of the sea. This ensures present and future generations can maintain a connection, a mooring, to their maritime past.
Description
Sailors sang all day to sustain themselves at sea. Today, their songs are a porthole into maritime history.
Duration
2 minutes, 18 seconds
Credit
Kathryn Daskal
Date Created
08/03/2020
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