Stan Hugill (19 November 1906 – 13 May 1992) was a British folk music performer, artist and sea music historian, known as the “Last Working Shantyman” and described as the “20th century guardian of the tradition”. [Wikipedia]
He first went to sea aged 16 in 1922 and spent 23 years on the high waves before retiring to land in 1945.
He was the last shantyman to sail on the last British commercial sailing ship the “Garthpool”.
His love of the sea never dimmed, in later life he became an instructor of an Outward Bound Sea School and a marine artist producing more than 250 oil paintings of ships and the sea.
He also penned five books on sea shanties as well as appearing on radio and television.
And he spoke numerous languages, he was fluent in Japanese and Spanish as well as speaking Maori, Malay, Chinese plus various Polynesian dialects. [BBC Liverpool]
When laid up with a broken leg in the 1950s, he began to write down the shanties that he had learned at sea, eventually authoring several books and releasing several LPs of performances later in coordination with a Merseyside folk group called Stormalong John. Although “shanty” is also spelled “chantey”, Hugill used the former exclusively in his books. [Wikipedia]
Jack [Coutts, a member of Stormalong John] remembers travelling to Krakow in Poland with Stormalong John and Stan, when the shantyman was in his eighties, and being in awe as he entertained an audience of more than a thousand young people.
Stan died in 1992 in Aberystwyth in Wales. [BBC Liverpool]