Stan Hugill's Birthday

Stanley James Hugill was born on November 19, 1906, in Hoylake, Cheshire. He first went to sea at sixteen, and by the late 1920s he was serving as shantyman aboard the Garthpool, the last British commercial sailing ship. Hugill later claimed to have led the last shanty ever sung in its proper working context: Fire Down Below, at the pumps, a few days before the Garthpool was wrecked off the Cape Verde Islands in November 1929.

His life at sea was far from over. In 1940, while serving as helmsman on the SS Automedon, the ship was sunk by the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis in the Indian Ocean. Hugill spent four and a half years as a prisoner of war. After the war, he became an instructor at the Outward Bound Sea School in Aberdovey, Wales, where he stayed for twenty-five years.

When a broken leg laid him up in the 1950s, Hugill began writing down the shanties he had learned at sea. The result was Shanties From the Seven Seas, first published in 1961, a collection of over 400 working songs with detailed notes on how and when each was sung. It remains the single most important reference work on the subject. He went on to publish Shanties and Sailors' Songs and Songs of the Sea, and recorded several albums of shanties himself. Since 1993, the Stan Hugill Memorial Trophy has been awarded at the Tall Ships’ Crews Shanty Competition.