FTX-047 - STORMY WEATHER, BOYS

BOB ROBERTS - Songs & Stories

'BOB' ROBERTS (1907-1982) with an album of storytelling together with 12 songs, 7 of them with melodeon accompaniment. Bob went to sea at 14 - his first ship, in 1921, was "The Waterwitch", the last square-rigged merchant ship trading out of Britain - his life has been a story-book of sea-adventure and, as A.W.Roberts, he has told the tale in his books: "Rough and Tumble", "Coasting Bargeman" and "The Last of the Sailormen", classics of sea-history and maritime storytelling.

1. WHEN I WAS SINGLE (or STILL I LOVE HIM) sung with melodeon - 2'12"

2. Talk about Margaret Catchpole - 3'33"

3. THE FOGGY DEW sung with melodeon - 2'19"

4. Talk about being born in Dorset, smugglers, burial graves & shingle - 3'28"

5. THE SMUGGLER'S BOY with melodeon - 2'10"

6. Talk: Will Lord, smuggler, hard life, piracy - 2'05"

7. THE BOLD PRINCESS ROYAL with melodeon - 2'30"

8. Talk: how sailors end their days, Suffolk boat-builders - 5'33"

9. THE WORST OLD SHIP (or WAITING FOR THE DAY) with melodeon - 2'08"

10. Talk about barge skipper whose father cut his throat, his uncle hung himself and he himself died shortly after - 0'49"

11. THE BARGEMAN'S ALPHABET - 3'48"

12. LITTLE BOY BILLEE with melodeon - 4'16"

13. Talk about the River Orwell, Pinmill, "The Butt Ball" - 1'29"

14. MAGGIE MAY with melodeon -2'23"

15. Talk about "The Waterwitch" and the singer of the following ballad - 0'40"

16. HENRY MARTIN - ballad sung unaccompanied - 3'45"

17. Talk: Barge-skipper Captain Ventris & other singers of next song - 1'41"

18. STORMY WEATHER, BOYS with melodeon - 3'16"

19. Talk about his family: parents, grandfather & grand-uncle's story - 2'27"

20. HIGH BARBAREE with melodeon - 3'05"

21. Talk about the - 1'10"

22. WILL WATCH, THE SMUGGLER sung unaccomp - 4'29"

Recorded by Peter Kennedy, Pinmill, nr. Ipswich, Suffolk, 1952-4. Edited by Peter Kennedy and first published on Folktrax Cassettes 1975.

The Thames sailing barges were designed for moving cargoes in soft-bedded rivers and other confined waters. For about 200 years their flat-bottom and shallow draught allowed them to carry heavy loads in a few feet of water, and to sit upright when the tide left them high and dry. Their red ochre mainsails were rigged with a "sprit", a long spar crossing diagonally from the foot of the mast to the peak, controlled by a rope called a "vang". The various parts of the barge are enumerated in the song, THE BARGEMAN'S ALPHABET (#10).

Bob Roberts became skipper of "The Cambria", the last Thames trading barge, in 1954. In 1966 he purchased her from Everards and, until 1971, he traded the barge up and down the East Coast, until she was finally purchased by The Maritime Trust as a museum ship. Bob was forced to abandon barges but not the sea, and for the last years of his life he traded from his home in the Isle of Wight on a small motor coaster called "The Vectis Isle". He died 12th February 1982, age 74.