Last weekend, November 18 &19, a large and very loud group of singers met in Liverpool to wish a happy hundredth birthday to the last of the working shantymen, Stan Hugill. Stan may have died in 1992, but his spirit was very emphatically present at this celebration of the songs of the sea which he did so much to preserve.
Stan was born on the other side of the Mersey at the Coastguard station in Hoylake, Cheshire in 1906 where his father was one of the Coastguards. His father and grandfather were both singers, and their songs were written down in notebooks which were passed down to Stan. The family moved to other stations before returning to Liverpool where Stan finished his schooling, and from where he began his sailing career in the early 1920's. On board the last of the commercial sailing ships Stan learned the work songs of the sailors; the shanties which accompanied the heavy tasks of heaving and hauling. Stan was the shantyman on the Garthpool, the last British four-masted bark, which was wrecked off Cape Verde in 1929. After further adventures ashore and at sea, including four years in a German POW camp, Stan became an instructor at the Outward Bound School at Aberdovey, Wales from 1950 to 1975.
It was during a period of enforced rest from his work at the School following a broken leg that Stan began to research sea shanties, the results of which he published in 1961 in the magisterial "Shanties from the Seven Seas". The book met an enthusiastic response in the atmosphere of the post-war British Folk Revival, and Stan himself found an welcoming audience for his songs in the folk clubs during the Sixties and later. To his delight and surprise the new generation were able to replicate the rough and ready sound of a ship's crew that to his ears was nearly as good the original. In Liverpool the Spinners folk group especially found inspiration from Stan, and he wrote regular articles in his 'Bosun's Locker' column for 'Spin' magazine. A group of Liverpool singers, Stormalong John, sang with Stan frequently, most memorably perhaps at the 1984 Garden Festival. Until his death in 1992 Stan travelled all over the world inspiring new audiences with the real salt flavour of shanties. This weekend in Liverpool was a chance for the younger generation to pay tribute to Stan.
As yet there is no memorial to Stan where the old Coastguard Cottages once stood in Hoylake; perhaps his songs and his books are his best memorial, but he well deserves some kind of permanent tribute in Wirral or in the port city of Liverpool.
Matthew Edwards
