Concertinas And Sea Music

[Rod Thompson]

Tell us more about Antarctica!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Don't get me started - you don't know what you might unleash!

 

We took well over 1000 photos between us, and are only part way through sorting them.

 

Hopefully when we get some order into the chaos, we will be able to put something onto our website.

 

Meantime, all I can say is that it was a trip of a lifetime; not always comfortable, and the weather far from perfect, but we wouldn't have missed it for the world!

[JimLucas]

...we wouldn't have missed it for the world! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wouldn't have missed the world for "the world"?

... What a concept!

[Nutmeg]

I agree with everything thats been said about the Antarctic - we went in 2001. There seems to be a magnet implanted in me to return. In passing through Buenos Airies, you cannot miss the tangoing. Its done in the streets and shopping centres. The dancing and bandoleon playing are VERY impressive.

 

But back to the main topic - I am a sailor and play the Anglo, albeit on a yacht, and I know of at least three others: maybe the sailors connection is new!

 

Occassionally in magazines such as "Maritime Life & Traditions" there's a photo of a whaling ship, or similar, with a crew member playing a concertina - but its rare.

Here's a sample - hope the publishers don't mind.

Peter

[JimLucas]

Occassionally in magazines such as "Maritime Life & Traditions" there's a photo of a whaling ship, or similar, with a crew member playing a concertina - but its rare.

Here's a sample - hope the publishers don't mind.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Looks to me more like a melodeon (German accordion), played with the top held forward at an angle.

 

Nice picture, though.

[Stephen Chambers]

Occassionally in magazines such as "Maritime Life & Traditions" there's a photo of a whaling ship, or similar, with a crew member playing a concertina - but its rare.

Here's a sample - hope the publishers don't mind.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Looks to me more like a melodeon (German accordion), played with the top held forward at an angle.

 

Nice picture, though.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It was so dark that I had to make it brighter to see anything, but then I could make out the keyboard, pallets and stop knobs of a melodeon, tipped forward on the players leg much as I would do myself to play standing like that. The only thing is that the melodeon appears to be left-handed, which isn't possible, so maybe it should look like this ?

 

Edited March 14, 2005 by Stephen Chambers

[Rod Thompson]

But back to the main topic - I am a sailor and play the Anglo, albeit on a yacht, and I know of at least three others:  maybe the sailors connection is new!

Peter

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Interesting, - of the 7 professional sailors I know who play musical instruments of any kind, five play the concertina. So there is certainly a current connection.

 

What I an interested in is how far back the connection goes. It is difficult to go back far with photos, since photos taken aboard ship are a recent thing.

 

On another subject - in most of the photos of people playing, they are playing for a dancer. Do the dances themselves survive anywhere?

 

The mate on the Soren Larsen used to do a kind of jig, unaccompanied, starting slow and accelerating to very fast.

 

Finally - where do you sail? (which of the seven seas?)

[Stephen Chambers]

But back to the main topic - I am a sailor and play the Anglo, albeit on a yacht, and I know of at least three others:  maybe the sailors connection is new!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interesting, - of the 7 professional sailors I know who play musical instruments of any kind, five play the concertina. So there is certainly a current connection.

 

What I an interested in is how far back the connection goes. It is difficult to go back far with photos, since photos taken aboard ship are a recent thing.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

From the very beginning, the concertina seems to have appealed to army and naval officers (the first instrument, my avatar, having been sold to Captain Gardnor of the 2nd Life Guards, Household Cavalry, another having later been bought by Captain Hood), no doubt because of its relatively small size and reliability.

 

The impression I have formed is that the concertina was historically more of a Royal Navy tradition than it was with other sailors, who played lots of instruments. No wonder Ken Loveless took one to sea with him during WWII (the semi-miniature Wheatstone now played by Jackie McCarthy), and hence the Royal Navy saying :

 

For the sailor ashore, It's wine. women, and song.

Once asea, it's rum, bum, and concertina.

 

Here's a postcard of some French sailors, dancing to the concertina :

Edited August 3, 2009 by Stephen Chambers

[Stephen Chambers]

I came across a very interesting Jersey Tourism website, which includes a page about maritime history, including the following about music and song at sea :

 

Music and dancing were a part of shipboard life both in the wardroom and the mess after-cabins and fo'c'sle

 

Songs not only included shanties or work songs for many songs classed as forebitters had been drawn from all over the world. They were known as forebitters because the men would gather at the forebitts - the double bollards used in making the ship fast alongside - in the evening. American sailors called these main-hatch songs for the same reason.

 

The rendition of this music was often poor and out of tune but its accessibility meant that both performer and listener were united by a common experience. Music also gave a certain measure of comfort, nostalgia and continuity to the listener who was sometimes in a strange, new or dangerous environment.

 

In short Sailor John sang of everything and anything.

While at sea most islanders were exposed to English or French influences and so it would seem probable that Channel Islanders would have adopted either French or English worksongs and kept their own music for the fo'c'sle.

 

In Europe and the Americas shanties died out as true working songs with the end of the age of the sailing ships ending a tradition which stretched back thousands of years

 

The type of musical instruments taken to sea have been many and varied. German ships were renowned for the quality of their shipboard musicians. On board many ships a scratch band or foo-foo band was formed by seamen for their own enjoyment.

 

At sea the fiddle has constantly been a favourite "dog-watch" instrument.

 

Fiddles, guitars, harmonicas, flutes and trumpets have all been popular. The reed instruments such as accordion and concertina were less so because they tended to rust up.

 

The last sentence being particularly interesting ...

[Stephen Chambers]

On the other hand, there is a very interesting chapter here, entitled THE MUMMERS, from A TALL SHIP ON OTHER NAVAL OCCASIONS BY " BARTIMEUS " Author of "Naval Occasions", CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD., First published September 1915.

 

It is a semi-fictional sketch of "an impromptu sing-song - a scratch affair organised at short notice to provide mirth and recreation for a ship's company badly in need of both" on board "a super-Dreadnought" (battleship) in the early stages of WWI.

 

The "turns" included :

 

" Private Mason, R.M.L.I. - Concertina solo ! "

 

A great burst of laughter and cheering broke out from the sailors, and redoubled as a private of Marines, holding a concertina in his gnarled fists, walked on to the stage. Even the officers put their hands up to smile behind them ; one or two nearest the First Lieutenant leaned over and patted him on the back as it he had achieved something.

 

The whole audience, officers and men, were evidently revelling in some tremendous secret reminiscence conjured up by the appearance of this private of Marines. Yet, as he stood there, fingering the keys of his instrument, waiting for the uproar to subside, there was little about him to suggest high humour. He was just a thin, rather delicate-looking man with a grizzled moustache and dreamy eyes fixed on vacancy. His claim to notoriety, alas, lay in more than his incomparable music. Human nature at its best is a frail thing. But human nature, as typified by Private Mason, was very frail. Apart from his failing he was a valuable asset to the singsong party; but, unhappily, it required all the resources and ingenuity of its promoters to keep Private Mason sober on the night of an entertainment.

 

When and how he acquired the wherewithal to wreck the high hopes of the reigning stage manager was a mystery known to him alone. His messmates drained their tots at dinner with conscientious thoroughness, and his into the bargain, striving together less in the cause of temperance than from a desire that he should for once do himself and his concertina (of which he was a master) justice.

 

Yet, his turn announced, on the last occasion of a concert before the war, the curtain rose upon an empty stage. The Carpenter's party happened upon him, as archaeologists might excavate a Sleeping Bacchus or a recumbent Budda, in the process of dismantling the stage. Private Mason was underneath it, breathing stertorously, a smile of beatific contentment on his worn features, his head pillowed on his concertina.

 

The Fleet Surgeon subsequently missed a large-sized bottle of eau-de-Cologne from his cabin, which he was bringing home from Gibraltar as a present for his wife. The discovery of the loss assisted him in his diagnosis of the case.

 

Silence fell on the audience at length, and the concertina solo began. As has been indicated, Private Mason could play the concertina. In his rather tremulous hands it was no longer an affair of leather and wood (or of whatever material concertinas are constructed), but a living thing that laughed and sobbed and shook your soul like the Keening. It became a yearning, passionate, exultant daughter of Music that somehow wasn't quite respectable.

 

And when he had finished, and passed his hand across his moist forehead preparatory to retiring from the stage, they shouted for more.

 

" Church bells, Nobby ! " cried a hundred voices. " Garn, do the church bells! " So he did the church bells, as the wind brings the sound across the valley on a summer evening at home, wringing his shipmates' sentimental heartstrings to the limit of their enjoyment.

 

" Strewth " " ejaculated a bearded member of the audience when the turn was over, relighting his pipe with a hand that shook. " I 'ear Nobby play that at the Canteen at Malta, time Comman'er-in-Chief an' 'is Staff was there - Comman'er-in-Chief, so 'elp me, 'e sob' like a woman . . . ."

 

The reminiscence may not have been in strict accordance with the truth, but, even considered in the light of fiction, it was a pretty testimony to Private Mason's art.

[Stephen Chambers]

Whilst looking for something in some old copies of Concertina & Squeezebox, I was surprised to come across this photograph again :

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And oriented as I had concluded must be correct (above), from the appearance of the melodeon.

 

It is captioned "Boatsteerers Dance. Historic photo taken aboard the whaleship Charles W. Morgan, August 1906, from the original glass negative. The instrument is a Hohner-type one-row melodeon. [Gifford Collection, The Kendall Whaling Museum, Sharon, Massachusetts.]"

 

The article which it heads is called "Concertina Around Cape Horn" By Stuart M. Frank, Director, The Kendall Whaling Museum, and it appears in C & S, Spring 1984, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 10-18, and it opens :

 

"The presence of concertinas on shipboard in the Age of Sail has been greatly exagerated. The handy little instruments seem to have been more popular with lithographers than seamen, and it is largely from illustrations of sailors done by landsmen ashore that our heritage of concertinas on shipboard derives. While in their own journal and voyage narratives sailors mention all manner and kind of musical instruments - fiddles, accordions, banjos, guitars, and even small parlor organs - the concertina does not figure at all. In fact, after having read literally hundreds of pieces of sailor writing, in manuscript and in print, I have not encountered even a single instance in which the concertina is mentioned or even alluded to. Whatever mention there may be in such firsthand voyage accounts must be very rare indeed, as it had eluded the scrutiny of the dozens who have searched. The square-rig sailors who have survived to tell of the experiences with shipboard music - including the late Carl Andersen of Mystic Seaport Museum, Captain A.F. Raynaud (now a marine surveyor in Seattle who was involved in the restoration of the Star of India in San Diego), and the irrepressible Stan Hugill of Aberdovey, Wales - are all unanimous in claiming never to have seen a concertina on shipboard, even once."

Edited March 14, 2005 by Stephen Chambers

[Stephen Chambers]

I am a sailor and play the Anglo, albeit on a yacht, and I know of at least three others ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You should come to Kilrush sometime, we've got a marina and concertina playing !

 

(Not forgetting the Mrs. Crotty Festival.)

 

Maybe concertina making too, when I get myself set up ?

Edited March 14, 2005 by Stephen Chambers

[Helen]

Although it seems that concertinas and sailors did not go together, whenever I explain the concertina as the instrument that sailors played, people always know what I am talking about. Subsequent conversation reveals that yes, people are making the connection to a concertina and not some other instrument.

 

So, I know now that the connection is not historical, but it has proven illustrative. (So, I think that I will keep using it. I could use a disclaimer!)

[Rod Thompson]

"Concertina Around Cape Horn" is a strange article - it makes the case for no concertina ever having been aboard ship ("even once"), then proceeds to shoot the case down.

 

1: It cites A.L. Lloyd (advisor to the 1956 "Moby Dick" movie, and an "eminent folklorist") having one of the sailors in the movie playing an English concertina.

 

2: It states that "Marine outfitters and ship chandlers, in England at least, occasionally carried them [concertinas] as part of their standard stock-in trade to sailors."

 

3: It goes on to document 2 cases of concertinas that were almost certainly used at sea.

 

The article seems to suggest that A.L. Lloyd's supposed error in "Moby Dick" is the source of the sailor-concertina link in the mind of the public.

 

The statement by Carl Anderson, Capt A F Raynaud and Stan Hugil that they had never seen a concertina on board really only refers to the ships they were aboard, and is no more universal than the statement by Dudley Turner on the Monkbarns that "There was always someone with a mouth organ or concertina".

 

Different ships, different long splices.

[Rod Thompson]

Here's a postcard of some French sailors, dancing to the concertina :

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Any idea of the age of the postcard?

[Stephen Chambers]

"Concertina Around Cape Horn" is a strange article - it makes the case for no concertina ever having been aboard ship ("even once"), then proceeds to shoot the case down.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think that may be overstating the case, after all his opening gambit is merely that "The presence of concertinas on shipboard in the Age of Sail has been greatly exagerated."

 

2: It states that "Marine outfitters and ship chandlers, in England at least, occasionally carried them [concertinas] as part of their standard stock-in trade to sailors."

Though they didn't just supply sailors. As a child, my own father would be sent to the local marine chandlers, in the 1920's, to get the family's wet-cell batteries recharged, for the wireless set. Whilst land-locked hardware shops were also a common source of supply for German concertinas and melodeons, and the dividing line between chandlers and hardware shops was often pretty vague, the common boast tended to be "everything from a needle to an anchor".

 

The article seems to suggest that A.L. Lloyd's supposed error in "Moby Dick" is the source of the sailor-concertina link in the mind of the public.

There seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest that the link goes back long before then, though the film probably reinforced it strongly for more recent times.

 

The statement by Carl Anderson, Capt A F Raynaud and Stan Hugil that they had never seen a concertina on board really only refers to the ships they were aboard, and is no more universal than the statement by Dudley Turner on the Monkbarns that "There was always someone with a mouth organ or concertina".

 

Different ships, different long splices.

Absolutely, but I think the point is that it was possible never to have seen a concertina on board, which rather debunks the myth of the universality of the concertina amongst sailors.

[Stephen Chambers]

Here's a postcard of some French sailors, dancing to the concertina :

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Any idea of the age of the postcard?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I would reckon that it was early 20th century, but can't say any better at the moment.

[Rod Thompson]

I think that may be overstating the case, after all his opening gambit is merely that "The presence of concertinas on shipboard in the Age of Sail has been greatly exagerated."

Point taken, but the author then goes on to use this to criticise AL Lloyd's inclusion of one in the movie of "Moby Dick".

Incidently, the author's other criticism of Lloyd - having the boat crew singing while rowing after whales - is also unfair. If this is a mistake, then the mistake is surely Melville's:

"How different the loud little King-Post. 'Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! .... ' .. and so saying he pulled his hat from his head and stamped up and down on it ... and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's stern like a crazed colt from the prarie" (from the chapter "First Lowering"). (This hardly sounds as though stealth was a big requirement).

 

Though they didn't just supply sailors. ...

land-locked hardware shops were also a common source of supply for German concertinas and melodeons

Did they carry any other instruments besides concertinas and melodians?

It seems that in outback Australia, the ironmongers often carried concertinas and other instruments, but this was probably more the case of being the only shop in town.

There seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest that the link goes back long before then ...

What I would like to know is where this link came from in the mind of the public.

 

Absolutely, but I think the point is that it was possible never to have seen a concertina on board, which rather debunks the myth of the universality of the concertina amongst sailors.

I think we can safely rule out any suggestion that the concertina was always aboard every ship, and likewise that it was never aboard any ship, the real question then is whether they were very common, very rare, or somewhere in between.

So far, my impression is "fairly common", and this is what caused the connection in the mind of the public in the late 19th early 20th century.

[Stephen Chambers]

Incidently, the author's other criticism of Lloyd - having the boat crew singing while rowing after whales - is also unfair. If this is a mistake, then the mistake is surely Melville's:

"How different the loud little King-Post. 'Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! .... ' .. and so saying he pulled his hat from his head and stamped up and down on it ... and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's stern like a crazed colt from the prarie" (from the chapter "First Lowering"). (This hardly sounds as though stealth was a big requirement).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interestingly, I recently happened to see part of a docmentary about whaling on one of the Spanish islands, and the oarsmen chanted to keep in time. But I understand that a whale's hearing may be much better underwater than on the surface ?

 

Though they didn't just supply sailors. ...

land-locked hardware shops were also a common source of supply for German concertinas and melodeons

Did they carry any other instruments besides concertinas and melodians?

They had sold Jew's harps before the invention of the free reed instruments, so it seems that they perhaps sold mainly musical instruments with metal tongues ?

 

There seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest that the link goes back long before then ...

What I would like to know is where this link came from in the mind of the public.

Cheap German concertinas became extremely popular in the 1860's, so I very much doubt if it could have been prior to that.