August carried the Crew from a country fair and a brewery taproom to the grounds of a medieval castle—but one of the month’s most memorable musical moments occurred entirely by chance, over a quiet drink in a Porlock pub. We began on 2 August at Porlock Country Fair, where seven members of the Crew took to the field for an afternoon of shanties and maritime songs. Away from our own performance, we particularly enjoyed watching the family dog show—although, wisely, none of the Crew attempted...

Built on the River Dee, named in Ireland and now lying at Gloucester, Kathleen & May nevertheless has a powerful claim upon North Devon’s maritime memory. Appledore gave her three decades of working life; Bideford gave her a second life when she seemed in danger of disappearing altogether. There are ships which belong chiefly to the place where they were built, and others which come to belong to the waters and communities that shaped their working lives. Kathleen & May is one of the latter....

History There is a good chance you have heard Andy sing The Mollymauk in the bar of the Ancient Mariner, the Lynmouth pub that is the spiritual home of the Shanty Crew, and come away certain it was very old. That haunting, circling tune, the talk of Cape Horn and the ghosts of drowned men — it has the weight of something handed down through generations of forecastle singers. It is not. The Mollymauk was written in 1987. Its author, Bob Watson, set out to capture the vastness of the southern...