Meet the Northern Women Keeping Sea Shanties Alive
Eleven women from across the North are keeping the region's heritage of sea shanties alive, and this year they're celebrating their 15th anniversary
In 2011, a group of women in Whitby were brought together by the power of folk music, and for the last 15 years they’ve shared sea shanties with audiences across the region and beyond.
Eilish Ferry-Kennington and her sister Esther grew up with folk music. ‘My dad's a morris dancer and he has always sung, and my mam sings too,’ says Eilish. ‘When we were kids, we would learn songs and then we'd be in a pub and my dad would stand us on a chair and say “the girls are going to sing – shush” which makes it sound really precocious, but it was just part of what we’d do. Everyone else in the group has also been singing for a long time.’
Many of the sea shanty singers across our region at that time were men, but when Eilish shared that she was interested in starting a women-only sea shanty group, plenty of women responded. ‘Our first gig was at St Mary's Lighthouse where we we could only sell about 30 tickets due to the capacity,’ says Eilish. ‘The tide came in and so we were stranded at the lighthouse but we did a brilliant afternoon gig with amazing acoustics – it all started from there and we've just kept going.’
Eilish and Esther grew up in Newcastle, but Esther currently lives in Todmorden in West Yorkshire where she started a folk festival which is now in its 10th year. ‘She's a morris dancer – I’m a clog dancer – and she lives with her wife, Ruthie Boycott-Garnett who is also a She Shanty and a morris dancer (and her mam’s a morris dancer),’ says Eilish. ‘Ruthie is an amazing singer. She's got quite a deep voice. They sometimes do duets together.’
There are actually three sets of sisters in the group. ‘There’s Freyja, Ruthie’s sister and they grew up in Marsden in West Yorkshire, but Freyja now lives and works in Sheffield, and she’s a teacher,’ Eilish adds. ‘She has also been a morris dancer and a rapper dancer (a kind of sword dancing). Ruth Price and her sister Sadie Greenwood are a well-known folk singing duo. They grew up in Dewsbury and their dad was Bill Price, a very eminent folk singer, and their mam was Wendy Price, who was well known in the folk scene as well. Ruth now lives in Whitby and Sadie lives near Brighouse. We didn't know them before we started the She Shanties, but Esther had been talking to Ruth at a folk festival and they were well up for it – they sing amazing harmonies.’
There’s around a 30-year age gap between the members and Kate Gessey is the oldest. ‘Kate lives in Hexham and leads choirs and she's got a fabulous voice,’ Eilish says. ‘Then there is Sally Gall who grew up in County Durham. Her parents were two of the team who set up Beamish Museum. I knew Bekka Bojanowski from Whitby Folk Week and she sings wonderfully too. Then there’s Cath Tyler, who is from New Jersey but has lived in England for 20-ish years and now lives in Newcastle. She was previously in a band called Cordelia's Dad. If you haven't you should look them up. At one point that band supported Nirvana, I believe. Rachel Hamer’s mam was a teacher at the school that Esther and I went to and so we've known her and her family for a really long time. She sings with her dad sometimes. We went to Rachel's wedding last August and we sang and the sun came out and it was lovely. Rachel lives in Whitley Bay and her and Freyja were really young when we started out.’
All 11 women have found a connection in their love for singing sea shanties, but they find it hard to explain. ‘We were once asked this question at Cambridge Folk Festival, and everyone had a different answer,’ says Eilish. ‘One of them said it's just like being a family. When we say family, obviously with 11 women there’s always bickering! Harmony singing brings something physiological that I don't know the science of, but it's amazing. It’s the fact that we don't do huge amounts of practice. We come together and it just works – we don't ask too many questions. When we went around that group everyone was so emotional and so sentimental, and then it got to Sadie and she said, “yeah, it's nice”… so there's also that,’ Eilish laughs.
‘The songs have such a history across the world, and when I was growing up folk music wasn't all male (there were women singing), but it was very English… and it’s not all English. It's from enslaved people, it’s come via the railroads in America, some of it is from the coast of the North East where we live, and some of it you don't know where it's from and there are so many versions of it because it's been passed orally through people who were working in really hard conditions. We do it as this sentimental thing but you've got to have a massive respect for where it comes from and recognise that we wouldn't sing some of the old songs, and some of what we heard when we were children, now because it does have words in there that we just wouldn't use. So you've got to have some authenticity in where it comes from, but also recognise that times change.’
In 2015, the She Shanties released their EP, Spanker Boom, named after what was in their opinion the most amusing part of the ship. The search for more amusing names continued and in 2018 they released their first full length album, Futtock Shrouds, followed by their second album, Lubber’s Hole, in 2023. The group have performed at festivals around the UK and Europe, on boats, in churches and in beer tents. ‘We have sung in some amazing places,’ says Eilish. ‘We sang at a festival in Paimpol in Brittany, and at a festival in the Netherlands. We did the main stage at Cambridge Folk Festival, which was quite exciting, and lots of others.’
This October, the She Shanties will perform at The Common Room in Newcastle in celebration of their 15th anniversary, with special guests and those who have supported the group including Roger Kennington, Jim Mageean, Tegwyn Roberts, Jenny Bromley, Spare Hands (a shanty singing band from Hull), Bryony Griffith & Alice Jones (who sing songs celebrating Yorkshire and are involved in The Yorkshire Garland Project), and Hazel Richings (formerly one half of the singing duo, Hissyfit). ‘The plan is that each of them will perform a couple of songs, and we will sing with them, and we will then do a set of what we consider to be classics, all of our favourite songs,’ says Eilish.
It can be quite surprising, and certainly moving, when you hear the She Shanties for the first time. ‘We've had a little girl just stand and stare at us and I love that,’ Eilish says. ‘We expected, when we started out, that some of the old shanty singers, and the men, would be like, “what are you lot doing?” But they really weren't. There was a real acceptance and support from most people. When people haven't heard it before, there’s just that fascination of, “what on earth is this?” Often they ask, “is it Irish?” Because lots of people don't know English or any other folk music than Irish. We love audiences asking questions or really just enjoying the harmony and the rhythm.’
