Solent Shanty Sing

In 2023, England is celebrating ‘The Year of The Coast’ with the entire English coastline now accessible via footpaths and the longest signposted route in the World finally open.

Southampton, Hampshire, Isle of Wight and Portsmouth Music hubs, along with other hub partners, have been working together to bring a large-scale Sea Shanty project to all of our schools. This began with composition workshops in the Autumn term with different age ranges in a small number of schools and will culminate in some massed singing event in the summer term.

Workshops & Performances

If have not already done so you can sign up for this project using the buttons below. You will be entitled to a free vocal workshop from the music hub to introduce the materials in the Spring term. Following on from that we will be holding some local and one very large scale cross hub massed singing event as follows, which you can also sign up for here.

Songbook & Resources

Solent Shanty Sing includes existing shanties and new songs written for and about Southampton, Isle of White, Portsmouth and wider Hampshire. Some of the shanties in this book were collected locally by the folk song collectors of the early 1900s and can be found in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library online. Many of the songs were inspired by school children who contributed ideas and drawings, and sometimes words. Songs can be adapted and song arrangements are very flexible.

This book was curated, compiled, arranged, designed and sometimes composed by sound artist and composer Dr Emily Peasgood, with the support of musicians Dani Osoba and Sam Slattery.

Access the Songbook (PDF) and lyrics presentation via the buttons below and all of the audio files you will need to practise and learn the material introduced by our workshop leader.

We have added an extra song especially for the Isle of Wight which is all about the Heritage Coastline by composer Jo Downs which is also linked below and feeds into the project work we’re doing with the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team and the New Carnival Company with the Crossing the Bar Project.

There are four core songs for the performance which all areas will learn (as below). For some of these songs we will just learn the call or response line or certain verses for different schools which your workshop leader will organise with you depending on Key Stage so although this looks like a lot of songs there is not an unmanageable amount of material here. Lyrics sheets are very welcome on the day too if you don’t want to memorise lots of words for the performance.

Core Songs

To Portsmouth (simple round)

Fishing in the Solent

River Shanty (only the IOW verses)

What’s That Lurking in the Water

Isle of Wight specific songs to learn:

The Heritage Coast

Down The Solent

Throw Out The Lifeline (optional)