The Concertina at Sea - The Anglo-German Concertina

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This report examines the world of 19 th and early 20 th century nautical life, looking for first-hand reports of the use of the concertina at sea. Because concertinas, both onshore and offshore, largely disappeared from the scene after World War I, there is little to be gained from living sources; any players from that era are long dead. We must look at the diaries, books, and newspaper stories that those who witnessed this era left behind. There are no sound recordings of sailors playing the concertina, so whatever is to be learned about what sort of music they were playing must also come from these first hand accounts. Fortunately, there is an enormous body of literature describing life at sea during this period, and because a fair sampling of it has now become digitally available, modern search engines can be put to the task. The concertina, like other instruments used at sea, and indeed nautical music in general, is not an item of central concern to a typical 19 th century writer, and thus references to it are usually to be found as paragraphs in book-length narratives or diaries, rather than in brief, focused newspaper articles. Such narratives survive in great numbers, written by ship owners, sea captains, wives of sea captains, ship passengers, missionaries, explorers, naval officers, and of course sailors themselves. These writers reveal that the concertina was indeed very commonly played, and much beloved, on a very wide variety of ships from the 1850s to the First World War: whaling ships, clipper ships, merchant and passenger sailing ships, large schooner yachts, early sail-assisted steamers, commercial steamships, vessels of Arctic exploration, and warships of the British and American navies. In addition, some of the most widely known fiction writers of the time commented upon the use of the concertina at sea, and/or included its powerful imagery in their novels, including Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, W. Figure 1. Ceramic figurine of sailor playing a concertina. Midtwentieth century, English Somerset Maugham, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and William Clark Russell. Their fictional descriptions of its use closely correlate with the observations found in first hand narrative accounts. The concertina was used at sea primarily to provide music for dancing. When at home port, sailors played at dances for visitors and friends; when in exotic locales such as the South Seas or the Arctic, they entertained native people with their music, and charmed local women with polkas and waltzes. In Arctic Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, early 20 2 th century anthropologists and musicologists remarked upon the frequent use of fiddles, concertinas and accordions by Inuit and Aleut peoples, as well as upon the proportion of European and American dance music that they played—all attributed to several decades of interaction with sailors on board whaling ships. When at sea, sailors played for shipboard dances for passengers, and (last but hardly least) for the step-dancing of each other. The concertina was also frequently used to accompany singing. Such singing was most typically done during evening slack time, and involved both nautical songs as well as any popular songs of the day. Hymns were also common, not usually at organized church services as might be expected (although this was the norm perhaps on large naval ships), but in the forecastle. Such hymns were comforting to sailors experiencing the disquieting solitude of the vast ocean, the loneliness of years away from loved ones, and the dangers of an uncertain voyage. What seems to have been almost entirely absent is the use to which the concertina is most often put by re-enactors today—shanty singing of work songs. A most impressive feature of both non-fiction and period fiction accounts is the nearly always positive treatment given the instrument in written accounts and reviews of the music it made and the sailors who played it. These were nearly exclusively Anglo-German concertinas, many of them of the inexpensive German-made variety, although many too were built in England. Accounts of these instruments onshore during this period were almost always harshly critical; the music was thought crude and the players ‘those of the working class.’ Writers at sea saw the instrument in a completely different light, and responded with more prose written about this instrument in its nautical setting than for all its many other guises during that era- classical, Irish, Morris, music hall, etc. This report emphasizes first hand accounts, and these are reported below in some detail. I make no apologies for the number and length of these entries, for it is here that we may gauge the full extent of the concertina’s use at sea. Where possible, photographs of the crew or the vessel are included, to give the present day reader a feel for the people and ships behind the descriptions. There is also an account given of the decline and disappearance of the instrument, of the reasons its history of use at sea was generally lost, and of the cultural factors that led to a denial in some quarters that its nautical use ever occurred. Some attempt is also made to suggest resources for period music more typical of its actual shipboard use, in order to assist re-enactors and others interested in recreating a sound that is long gone.
Table 1. Index of ships where sailors or officers (and in a few cases, passengers) were observed with concertinas, as well as the sections in this report where those observations are discussed The 1850s 1854 Allen Gardiner, two-masted schooner, British operated, sailing from England to Tierra del Fuego 1855 White Star, three-masted clipper ship, British, England to Melbourne Australia 1859 Maria, three-masted Boston bark, American, Cork to Boston The 1860s 1862 Early Morn, full-rigged ship, British, Natal to England 1862 CSS Alabama, three-masted screw sloop-of-war and raider, Confederate, Charleston to England 1862 City of Manchester, sail-assisted mail steamer, British, trans-Atlantic 1863 Great Britain, three masted sail-assisted steamship (originally six-masted), British, London to Australia 1864 Essex, passenger sailing ship, British, Melbourne to England 1864 USS Nautilus, bark-rigged steam sloop-of-war, American, blockade duty in Civil War 1865 John Williams, three masted bark, British, London to Australia 1866 La Plata, steam packet ship, British, England to Caribbean 1866 Nancy Hanks, fishing schooner, American, Maine to Grand Banks 1860s HMS Royal Oak , iron-clad frigate, British 1867 HMS Juno, wooden-hulled steam corvette, British 1868 Selene, schooner yacht, 275 tons, British, Glasgow to Mediterranean The concertina in the whaling trade 1868 Merlin, three-masted bark whaling ship, American, New Bedford to West Africa 1884 Lucinde, two-masted brig, Danish, Denmark to Greenland 1899 Esquimaux, whaling steamer, British, London to Baffin Bay The 1870s 1870 Levina, commercial schooner, British, Wales to Dublin 1870 Young Australia, three-masted ship, British-Australian, Australia to Fiji 1872 HMS Excellent, warship, British 1873 Kelso, bark, American, San Francisco to Liverpool 1874 Britannia, steam ocean liner, British, Round the world voyage 1875 Ellen Southard, sailing lumber ship, British, tropics to Liverpool 1876 Surprise, brigantine, British, South Africa to London 1877 Name unknown, steamship, British, Liverpool to Jamaica 1877 City of Chester , sail-assisted mail steamer, British, Liverpool to New York 1879 Suffolk, steamship, British, West Indies to England A concertina-playing sailor, and African-American, first to the North Pole 1878 Katy Hines, three-masted merchant ship. American, voyages to Far East, North Africa and the Black Sea 1891 Kite, Steamship, American, Arctic Greenland exploration The 1880s and 1890s 1880 City of Brussels, sail-assisted mail steamer, British, Liverpool to New York 1881 Crown Prince, passenger sailing ship, German, Germany to Galveston, Texas 1881 Teuton, steamer, British, Cape Town to Port Elizabeth 1882 Name unknown, Liverpool packet ship, British, Ireland to New York 1882 Great Eastern, passenger steamship, British, Cork to New York 1883 Falcon, 30 ton sailing yacht, British, Parana River and South American coast 1883 Caledonia, trading schooner, British, New Zealand to Samoan Islands 1883 HMS Lark, surveying ship, British, Solomon Islands 1883 Name unknown, merchant sailing ship, British, sailing in Sunderbunds off the Ganges Delta 1883 Name unknown, fishing trawler, British, North Sea 1889 Fortuna, brigantine lumber ship, Russian, Russia to Newcastle England 1889 Name unknown, sailing yacht, British, New Guinea (Basil Thompson comment) 1884 Name unknown, sailing ship, observed from British steamer 1885 Orient, sail-assisted steamer, British, Portsmouth to Australia 1887 Cypromene, commercial three-masted bark, British, England-India-Australia 3
Page 1: . The Concertina at Sea: A History
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The Concertina at Sea - The Anglo-German Concertina

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