Birth name Stanley James Hugill Name Stan Hugill Instruments Vocals Role Music performer | Years active 1950–1992 Genres Folk music Associated acts Stormalong John | |
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Occupation(s) Merchant seaman, shanty-man, historian Albums Sailing Days, In Concert at Mystic Seaport Similar People Louis Killen, Bounding Main, Banana Boat, Johnny Collins, Bob Zentz |
Stan hugill south australia
Stanley James Hugill (/'hju:ɡɪl/) (November 19, 1906 – May 13, 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".
Contents
- Stan hugill south australia
- Stan hugill lowlands
- Biography
- Stan Hugill Memorial Trophy
- Books
- Recordings
- Video
- References

Stan hugill lowlands
Biography

He was born in Hoylake, Cheshire, England, to Henry James Hugill and Florence Mary Hugill (née Southwood). His sailing career started in 1922, and he retired to dry land in 1945. He notably served as the shantyman on the Garthpool, the last British commercial sailing ship (a "Limejuice Cape Horner"), on her last voyage which ended when she was wrecked on 11 November 1929 off the Cape Verde Islands.
After four and a half years as a German prisoner of war during World War II, Hugill was an instructor at the Outward Bound Sea School in Aberdovey from 1950 to 1975. In the 1950s he also taught sailing skills (and sang sea shanties) on the sail-training ship Pamir but fortunately was not on its ill-fated last voyage. Fluent in Japanese and Spanish (as well as speaking Maori, Malay, and Chinese and various Polynesian dialects), he also worked as a Japanese translator from 1951 to 1959.
He married Bronwen Irene Benbow in 1953; they had two children, Philip and Martin. He anchored the BBC programme Dance and Skylark from 1965 to 1966, and wrote monthly the column "Bosun's Locker" for Spin (a Liverpool folksong magazine).
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.
Stan Hugill Memorial Trophy
As of 1993, the Stan Hugill Memorial Trophy is awarded to the winner of the Tall Ships' Crews Shanty Competition. The competition became international in scope in 2000 when it was held in Douarnenez, France.