About
The Shipwright Shanty Crew are a group of friends who enjoy singing traditional shanties in the traditional style, wearing traditional clothing and drinking traditional ale out of traditional tankards. You could say we are nothing if not traditional.
We are based in the old harbour town of Whitstable in Kent but our membership is drawn from all over the South East and is many and varied which means our line up at each event is likewise varied. We feel this keeps us on our toes with a larger repertoire as a result. Between us we sing a total of more than 200 shanties, forebitters, sea songs and anything of a maritime nature: if it’s damp, we’ll sing it!
Many of our crew have considerable maritime knowledge gained from living and working in the ports and harbour towns and working on board modern ships. No matter what, we all know the difference between port and starboard – none of us would ever drink starboard.
We have, over the years, sung on a fair few ships, including the brig “Maria Assumpta” (at the time the oldest square rigger in the world), the Thames barges “Greta” and “Orinoco”, and the “Grand Turk”, a modern ship built to the 1741 plans of HMS Blandford, a frigate of Nelson’s time.
We sing at a wide variety of festivals and other events, raising funds for the RNLI whenever possible.
Though some of us have been singing since the ’twevlties, our group started in the 1980s, taking our name from one of our favourite pubs, The Shipwright’s Arms, and, with new crew joining over the years, we’ve been singing ever since!
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