This year, Leith Hill Timeline Choir are pouring their energy into the folk songs of the South East of England, which has drawn us into the briny world of sea shanties, pirates, sailors, the navy draft and ghosts of lovers lost at sea. Carol Fisher reflects on the former abundance and – she argues – current scarcity of sea songs in this island nation...

Around a third of the songs we have learned since Timeline Choir began have had direct links with the sea- even though in centuries gone by, far less of the population would ever have seen or had experience of Mare Nostrum

Yet today, how much contemporary music of any kind reflects our Island Heritage- I struggle to think of any…

Why the disparity? Well, maybe it’s in part because, in previous centuries, the sea dominated our major means of travel & our ability to wage war (successfully). It was feared, mysterious and very dangerous.

Additionally, sailors of all kinds were separated from their sweethearts, friends and families for months, or even years, at a time- so they had plenty of time to create tales of lost love, press-ganged recruitment and disasters featuring drowning sailors and sinking ships.

So, returning to my conundrum, and the lack of modern maritime folk songs do we feel that we have now tamed the sea, thinking of it as a place of recreation, rather than work or danger? Does twenty first century communication mean that we are never really out of touch with our loved ones, no matter where they are? Is the sea irrelevant in our twenty first century ‘high tech’ lives?

Or is it that people now just do not come together for long enough in an environment where they could create their own “Songs of the Seas”?

All views gratefully accepted….

Carol Fisher