Crossjack Shanty Singers

Crossjack is the name of a small sail at the mizzen mast. It is used to hold a course and this five piece Shanty Crew aim to do just that. They sing traditional sea shanties, unaccompanied, as they would have been sung in the days of sail and they are keen to authentically reproduce the sounds that would have been heard aboard the tall ships as the work was carried out. Crossjack have performed at many maritime festivals in their native Germany and abroad. [From the Harwich Shanty Festival website.]

The group formed in July 2003 when two friends wanted to sing traditional shanties. Soon two other friends of historical seafaring joined them. One dropped out due to illness in 2008, three other interested parties gradually joined.

We sing shanties with six singers a cappella because we intend to preserve some of the sound that used to be heard on board.  We sing with clean intonation and we want to express as authentically as possible the use of force of the work for which the respective shanty was intended. In this way we get something of the sound world of that time.