Concertinas And The Sea

[fiddlersgreen]

For what it is worth, my Lachenal New Model EC has a lot of sea time from when I was in the Merchant Marine in the 1980s. I actually bought it in NYC while looking for a ship. I called every music store in the City that I could find and only one shop (Accordian-O-Rama) had a vintage concertina. But with only 16 to 24 crew (all working 12-16 hr days) on a large blue water ship, playing any kind of music is pretty much a solo affair. Size was a main factor for taking a concertina to sea. In my cabin I would play it inside a sweat shirt or pillow cases to keep from waking any of the watch standers. Once in a while I would go up inside the focsule to play but the trip up forward at night could be risky and I was always worryed that the mate on watch on the bridge might hear some of my musical ramblings and mistake them for some nautical emergency.

[Woody]

Not wishing to shoot the argument down "in flames" but I noticed on a trip around the "Cutty Sark".... that not one concertina was in evidence in photos.

Concertinas were banned on the Tea Clippers because of the fire risk.

Edited June 2, 2007 by Woody

[asdormire]

Fire risk?

 

Alan

[Woody]

Fire risk?

 

Alan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6675381.stm

[asdormire]

I don't see anything about banning concertinas because of the risk. the burning of the Cutty Sark was a sad day for anglophones everywhere. Am I missing a connecting link?

 

Alan

[JimLucas]

I don't see anything about banning concertinas because of the risk. the burning of the Cutty Sark was a sad day for anglophones everywhere. Am I missing a connecting link?

What you seem to be missing is a twisted sense of humour.

Meself, I saw the "connection" immediately.

[Stephen Chambers]

Stephen,

The radio piece was not nearly so specific; it led with a quote from a fellow named Keith who said something to the effect that it was a myth "that sailors ever used it", to which JK responded, 'Spot on".

Dan,

 

Thanks for telling me, I haven't been able to listen to the program personally because I only have a poor dial-up connection at the moment, but hopefully the Irish Farmers Association (I kid you not ) are going to provide me with wireless broadband at my new address in a few weeks time.

 

Most working men at sea, be they in the navy, on a merchant boat, or a passenger boat, are called sailors. All my illustrations are hence valid, in my opinion.

Of course they are (with the possible exceptions of the emigrant passengers, or the bargemen, depending on which particular definition of "sailor" that you're using) and I didn't deny it. I only expressed an interest in analysing just who these sailors were, and the purpose for which they were playing the instrument, to see how it fits in with the popular mythology of seamen and the concertina.

 

The reason that I picked out the navy men was not to dismiss them but because evidence of a tradition of naval concertina playing does seem to be emerging, but many of the other usual cliches don't seem to be supported at the moment.

 

But then, let's go for the gusto. How about a concertina on a bonafide English sailing ship, from the great age of sail, sailing near Cape Horn? Would that work?

The whole point of my reference to Cape Horners is that it's a popular cliche, but you have to go "round the Horn" to qualify, nearby doesn't count!

 

But seriously, the link you provided will only let me see a few lines of text, do you know who the concertina player in question was? The reason I ask is that, at that early date, it seems likely that it could have been one of the ship's officers playing, rather than one of the crew.

 

"The crew had formed a band of minstrels, and they often beguiled away many hours on board. One seaman had made a tambourine from a sheepskin given by the ship’s butcher; another had an old concertina, another the bones and a triangle. Sailors like they at once consented to take part with their negro dances. So I christened them the Ocean Christy Minstrels."

 

This little description is full of other interesting information. Stan Hugill, the acknowledged leading expert on shanties in the age of working sail, put together a lot of documentation in his book that many shanties had African-American origins, and that the the shanty repertoire is full of tunes that began in minstrelsy. In my article on American anglo playing, I included several examples of minstrel groups using the concertina; this one is a two-fer...sailors doing minstrel songs with a concertina at sea.

Blackface minstrel troops were very popular entertainment at the time, and commonly included either a concertina or accordion, along with the usual banjos, tambourine and bones, but don't forget that Stan Hugill also claimed never to have seen a concertina onboard ship, whilst I've probably seen photos of more banjos than concertinas in the hands of sailors...

 

... her comment helps establish just how common the German instruments were in England at the time, which I think you agree with.

German concertinas were certainly popular at the time because of their cheapness, though from the 1870s onwards the melodeon had become even more popular. However, I notice that your illustration of a turn-of-the-century concertina-playing sailor is Joe Irving playing an expensive Lachenal Edeophone English concertina...

Edited January 13, 2008 by Stephen Chambers

[Stephen Chambers]

Concertinas were banned on the Tea Clippers because of the fire risk.

Wot, like Rolf Harris' accordion???

[Woody]

Concertinas were banned on the Tea Clippers because of the fire risk.

Wot, like Rolf Harris' accordion???

Rock 'n' Roll! Hendrix is reborn

[JimLucas]

...the link you provided will only let me see a few lines of text, do you know who the concertina player in question was? The reason I ask is that, at that early date, it seems likely that it could have been one of the ship's officers playing, rather than one of the crew.

And ships' officers aren't actually sailors?

Poor

Reuben Ranzo

!

[Guest Mick Diles]

What you seem to be missing is a twisted sense of humour.

Meself, I saw the "connection" immediately.

For the sake of this "sense of humour" I would like to change the title of this thread from "Concertinas And The Sea" into "Concertinas IN the Sea"

[asdormire]

Concertinas were banned on the Tea Clippers because of the fire risk.

Wot, like Rolf Harris' accordion???

 

 

Wouldn't have been easier just to ban stage lights on the clippers.

 

Alan

[JimLucas]

"The crew had formed a band of minstrels, and they often beguiled away many hours on board. One seaman had made a tambourine from a sheepskin given by the ship’s butcher; another had an old concertina, another the bones and a triangle. Sailors like they at once consented to take part with their negro dances. So I christened them the Ocean Christy Minstrels."

 

This little description is full of other interesting information. Stan Hugill, the acknowledged leading expert on shanties in the age of working sail, put together a lot of documentation in his book that many shanties had African-American origins, and that the the shanty repertoire is full of tunes that began in minstrelsy. In my article on American anglo playing, I included several examples of minstrel groups using the concertina; this one is a two-fer...sailors doing minstrel songs with a concertina at sea.

Blackface minstrel troops were very popular entertainment at the time, and commonly included either a concertina or accordion, along with the usual banjos, tambourine and bones.

While blackface minstrels were certainly popular over an extended period, it's not clear to me that the "Ocean Christy Minstrels" in Dan's quote weren't "the real thing". According to Stan Hugill, black sailors were common enough that some ships alternated watches of all white and all black crews. I'm struck by the phrase "their negro dances" in the quote. It could mean "their interpretations of negro dances", but it could also have been meant as a repetition for the sake of emphasis, i.e., to say that the minstrels were "negros" doing "their" own dances. It could even be that both the sailors and the minstrels among them were a mixed crew.

[JimLucas]

For the sake of this "sense of humour" I would like to change the title of this thread from "Concertinas And The Sea" into "Concertinas IN the Sea"

I fear you've crossed the line between "sense of humour" and "

sinking

too low".

[Robin Harrison]

This has been a very narrow discussion; responding to John KP's radio comments about the concertina only.

Stephen mentioned the melodion in passing.Do the same comments broadly apply to this instrument ?..............it can be small, cheap and badly made.

In the course of research,does the melodion appear more or less than the concertina?

Continuing this thought,Dan Worral's detailed paper on Concertina.com has as it's main the loss of the anglo concertina from American consciousness where it was once ubiquitous.It would seem likely that this might apply to the melodion also, as in the sea and sailing context under discussion.

Any observations ?

Robin

[Stephen Chambers]

... it could have been one of the ship's officers playing, rather than one of the crew.

And ships' officers aren't actually sailors?

Jim,

 

In the broader sense, but not the narrower...

 

Onboard ship the hierarchy would have meant the crew ("sailors") gathered "forrard", and the officers "aft", they wouldn't have socialised. Whilst the usual image would be of crewmen singing shanties, whaling songs etc. in the fo'c'sle or at the forward hatch.

 

According to Stan Hugill, black sailors were common enough ...

True enough, in fact somewhere amongst my books (in storage) I have one about an African-born sailor who (around 1800) learnt to play the fiddle and settled in England as a musician and music teacher...

 

Stephen mentioned the melodion in passing.Do the same comments broadly apply to this instrument ?..............it can be small, cheap and badly made.

In the course of research,does the melodion appear more or less than the concertina?

Robin,

 

Certainly in the photographs that I've seen the melodeon appears more frequently than the concertina, though it would not be unusual for it to be misidentified as a "concertina"!

[Dan Worrall]

An interesting discussion. I'll try to answer or at least comment on some of the points raised.

 

The reference I gave on the concertina on the 1850's Tierra del Fuego voyage was unfortunately the only place in the article where the concertina was mentioned...so who knows who played it. Characteristically for such references, however, it was mentioned without any comments that it was anything special...such as 'the captain's concertina' or "we brought our carefully protected concertina out to test the native's reaction"...it was just something they had on board. All of these references are like that, which suggest it was indeed nothing special...just part of everyday life. If you went to sea today on a merchant ship, and brought your harmonica or guitar, what are the chances anyone would mention it in some official documentation likely to be preserved? I suspect that is what we are dealing with.

 

That particular concertina could have been one of at least two things: 1) an EC; there were several makers by then. But it would be expensive, so the officers might have owned it. 2) a cheap german concertina (not too likely to be an A-G yet). There are English-written german concertina tutors in the early 1850s (MInasi's and Coule's, for example), so I would guess it could be a GC. In the US, we don't see lots of advertisements for GCs until the 1860s, although earlier tutors exist. IF a GC, it could have been owned by either a sailor or an officer...it was equally novel at this time to both (note the snazzy gents photo'd with them in my US Anglos article, for example), and was inexpensive.

 

Regarding Stan Hugill's comment that he never saw a concertina at sea...well, he wouldn't have, because he came along after the anglo-german and german concertina craze was over. As I mentioned in my article, in the US it was essentially dead...derided as old fashioned...by the turn of the century. And it had been overtaken by the melodeon even earlier, by the 1880s. (In the US, I'd guess that the 'anglo' heyday was perhaps 1855-1880, then its popularity tapered down slowly until it fell of a cliff around 1900). Hugill didn't go to sea until the 1920s (he was born in 1906)...so he would not have seen them any more then than one would see it today. I suspect that the sailors were just like their landlubber counterparts; when the A-G was hot, the sailors were caught up in the same craze. When it rather precipitously disappeared, they disappeared at sea as well. THis is congruent with the idea that there was no particular nautical tradition or style of concertina playing per se (as there is in Irish music); rather, people bought them like we do harmonicas today, and played whatever tunes came to mind. When the craze was over, it was over. Hugill came along nearly a generation after its disappearance. JK started playing concertina three to four generations after its disappearance as a popular 'wave' (Ireland excluded of course)...so oral anecdotal evidence is not necessarily to be trusted. I think this is the point that Robin is alluding to. By the way, Hugill's father also was a sailor, and he played a melodeon as he sang his songs.

 

All this has piqued my interest; I'll start doing a little more research, with a little history as the goal. If anyone has suggestions on where I might look, it would be most appreciated.

 

Dan

Edited June 4, 2007 by Dan Worrall

[m3838]

In San Francisco Marytime Museum, inside of the covered deck on the Steel made Sailing ship, there is a board with some photos of the ships' history.

One of them depict two sailors, sitting on some parapet, one of them plays what looks like 3 row 12+ bass Hohner, the other is listening. The Accordion was called an "Old Windbag". I made a photo with my cell phone, but couldn't post it here.

May be somebody more savvy with the cutting edge technology, can make a visit to the Fisherman's Warf and take pictures. Or I should remember to bring my camera.