William Pint & Felicia Dale
Bio and Pint and Dale's website

Dreadnaught.mp3 The Dreadnaught
The Dreadnaught is a traditional 'forebitter' or sailors' leisure song - usually sung while at rest, rather than a 'shanty' which was used to mark rhythm for a shipboard task. Forebitters were originally sung by sailors gathered around the forebitts, a sturdy structure near the bow of a ship.

The song honors of one of the most notable sailing vessels ever built in America. She was a flash American clipper packet built by Currier and Townsend of Newburyport, Massachusetts and launched in 1853.

The Dreadnaught made 31 round trips between New York and Liverpool for the Red Cross Line of New York, and was renowned for her speed - once crossing the Atlantic in nine days, seventeen hours. She was wrecked in 1869 while rounding Cape Horn.

Our arrangement incorporates a round based on a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and an original tune on the hurdy-gurdy.

FireDownBelow.mp3 Fire Down Below
In the 1840s guano became prized as a source of saltpeter for gunpowder and fertilizer. A ship's cargo hold loaded with the stuff in a warm climate created a ideal environment for spontaneous combustion. There are several versions of Fire Down Below that deal with that situation. Other versions took the opportunity to cleverly adapt the lyrics into cautionary tales about social diseases and encounters with dockside prostitutes. Our friend, Minnesota singer/scholar Bob Walser introduced us to this particular version of the shanty which deals less specifically with flaming cargo or social disease and more with the on-shore adventures of a sailor in California's San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1800's. The 'Midway Plaisances' apparently refers to a notorious boardwalk/midway amusement area near San Francisco at that time. One source suggests that 'hula-hula dancer' should actually be 'hoochie-coochie' dancer -- one of the attractions to be found there. Our version incorporates a key modulation and a couple of fiddle breaks.

CheerilyManTheSevenStars.mp3 Cheerily Man The Seven Stars
Stan Hugill, in Shanties From the Seven Seas, refers to Cheerily Man as one of the oldest of all known sea shanties. Shakespeare refers to it in The Tempest. There are many versions of this song not fit for family audiences. The verses we've taken are quite safe and would have been used specifically for 'catting the anchor' - securing it to the cathead and hoisting it inboard. Heavy work indeed. "Cheerily" refers to a tempo for hauling - 'cheerily' being faster than 'handsomely'. We follow it with a traditional English dance tune, The Moon and Seven Stars. From the 2004 recording, Seven Seas.

highbarbaree.mp3 High Barbaree
High Barbaree probably began as a ballad that was sung aboard ships as a forebitter and was eventually pressed into service as a capstan shanty as well. It's a rousing tale of piracy along the coast of North Africa, resulting in a sea battle and revenge.

AcrosstheWesternOcean.mp3 Across the Western Ocean
The shanty Across the Western Ocean dates from the great wave of immigration to the U.S. in the 19th Century. It's said that certain packet ship operators would load all the worldly possessions of immigrants onto their ships and then advise the passengers to leave the docks to find one last, decent meal before the ship's departure. The ship would then set sail without them and keep their goods.

TheTryphinasExtraHand.mp3 The Tryphina's Extra Hand.mp3
The Tryphina's Extra Hand is a poem from the works of our favorite writer of 'poetical nauticalia,' C. Fox Smith, the great English poet and writer who traveled aboard tall ships in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She wrote many poems about nautical events, sailors and their lives at sea. Quite a few of her pieces have been adapted as songs in recent years. We heard Bob Zentz do a version of this one in Norfolk, Virginia. Bob has a more cheerful melody that worked great on the concertina. Halloween was coming up however, so we set it in a minor key and turned it into a spookier sounding piece. One can imagine this 'yarn' being spun in a dimly lit forecastle.

William Pint and Felicia Dale sing the traditional song "John Riley" at Couth Buzzard Books, Seattle, WA, Aug. 13, 2010. Pacific Northwest Folklore Society Coffeehouse Concert.




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