A rousing collection of the most memorable and feel-good shanties in maritime history.

The perfect pocket reference for sea shanties and songs of the sea from the days of the great sailing ships. One hundred thirty traditional songs with music, arranged alphabetically and sized to conveniently fit in a coat pocket, sea bag, backpack, purse or back hip pocket.Easy to learn, these favorite songs can educate or entertain, or perhaps even accompany a working tall ship crew as they turn the capstan, haul on the bowline or splice the mainbrace.Work songs, play songs and all-around fun to sing songs ¿ for the sailor, singer and pirate in everyone.

Passed down in the oral tradition and sung traditionally as working songs, sea shanties tell the human stories of life at sea: hard graft, battling the elements, the loss of ships or pining for a lady on shore. Its pages decorated with hand-drawn or wood-cut illustrations from celebrated artist Jonny Hannah, Sailor Song addresses the current modern revival of sea shanties, and seeks to celebrate and to explore the historical, musical and social history of the traditional sea song through 40 beautiful, mournful, haunting and uplifting shanties. Acclaimed shanty devotee Gerry Smyth presents the background to each one alongside musical notation. The lyrics are elaborated with explanations of terminology, context including historical facts and accounts of life at sea, and the characters, both fictional and non-fictional, that appear in the songs from the great age of sail to the last days of square-rig. Where appropriate, a direct digital link is made to a shanty recording in the British Library Sound Archive.

This book contains not only more than 400 sea shanties but as much of their history as Stan Hugill could collect in his extraordinary career as sailor, scholar, author, artist and inspiration to new generations of sea-music enthusiasts and performers.