Deal Maritime Folk Festival

The Deal Maritime Folk Festival was a popular maritime music event that appears to have gone defunct as of this writing on 13 May 2024.  (It had been running at least since 1996.)  It has possibly transmogrified into the Deal Music and Arts Festival, but that certainly seems to lack the focus which endeared aficionados to the original event.  The original URL (http://www.dealmaritimefolkfestival.org.uk/) no longer propagates to a working website.

According to a discussion on the Mudcat Café website, the Deal Maritime Folk Festival lost official funding in 2012 and stated that the event was run on a volunteer basis by Ray Fielde.  There was mention that a mini-festival was held in 2018, but there are no working links to any evidence of that.  There was a “Songs to the Sea” event in Deal in 2016-2018, held for the benefit of RNLI, but there is nothing to suggest that this event was a successor to the Deal Maritime Folk Festival.

From a 2007 video posted on YouTube it appears that the event enjoyed Celtic entertainment, and Morris dancing as well as maritime-themed musicians.

An undated article from Great British Life features the festival, but the list of entertainers does not mention any notable maritime-genre performers, which is curious.