Sailing Songs Revisited

A Collection of 300+ Sailing Songs & Sea Shanties

A few months ago I wrote an article about some of my favorite sailing songs and I shared it with a number of sailing groups. The response was overwhelming and it was a lot of fun. I got hundreds of suggestions from sailors all over the world. They all had their favorite sailing songs and sea shanties, some of them I had heard of, some of them were new to me. So I decided to do another Sailing Songs article and share all the suggestions I received. You’ll probably be surprised with some of them, as I was.

There were so many songs, I’ve decided to split the songs up into categories. Traditional, Special Groups of Traditional, & Non-Traditional.

A special note about using the links below. When you click on play, an icon with 3 lines shows up on the top right. This is the playlist icon and when you click on it, it allows you to scroll through the songs and select which ones you want to listen to.

Traditional

The first category is that of Traditional Sailing Songs. These would be songs that have what I would call, a Commonwealth sound, and have an old-timey feel to them, despite when they were written or recorded. All the links below are Playlists in YouTube, so you can click on them once and they will play through the list, and you can navigate through them as well.

Groups Within Traditional

Some of the artists I discovered were so prolific that they deserved their own playlists. The following are collections of those.

Fisherman’s Friends

The Fishermen’s Friends are a group of 10 fishermen from a small fishing village called Port Isaac in Cornwall, England. They were discovered by a talent agent who heard them sing, and ended up signing them for a record deal, in 2010. They have gone on to create several albums of songs they have been singing for years, passed down from their fathers, who were also fishermen. There’s a movie about them which came out in 2019, telling their story. Definitely worth a watch.

Stan Rogers

Another artist that came highly recommended by several of you was Stan Rogers, a Canadian musician who has many traditional-sounding sailing and ocean songs. He was born in Ontario to a maritime family who had recently relocated there. He had so many songs that I assumed he had lived a long life, but it turns out he passed away at age 33 in a plane fire. The body of music he left behind is even more impressive, knowing he died young.

Storm Weather Shanty Choir

These guys have so many traditional-sounding sailing songs, I had to include them as a separate category. Fantastic bunch of songs here.

Paul Clayton

This is an album by Paul Clayton, an artist from the 50s. It’s traditional sailing songs for the most part, just him and his guitar. It’s a nice collection.

Non-Traditional Sailing Songs

These are songs that aren’t traditional sailing songs. Most of them have “sailing” or “shores” or “ocean” mentioned in them or talk about sailing ideas and concepts. Otherwise, they may not be a sailing song at all. This is by far the biggest playlist and there are songs across many decades and genres. If you have questions about why they are on the list, take a look at the lyrics and see if there’s anything nautical in them. If not, let me know and I will remove them. Otherwise if there are ones that are not included here, please let me know. I discover new ones all the time!

Jimmy Buffett

Of course, no list would be complete without a bunch of Jimmy Buffett songs. Here’s some of my favorites.

Eileen Quinn

Someone pointed out that I really couldn’t have a list of sailing songs without including this prolific sailing song writer. So I have added her as her own category. With 60+ sailing songs on this playlist, it is well deserved.

Newer Sailing Songs

This is a list of songs that I would consider newer sailing songs, meaning they fall under a category of new music and happen to mention sailing.

Victory at Sea

Someone recommended the following series, Victory At Sea. This is the soundtrack for that series. It is not traditional songs, but songs from the World War eras. They definitely put you in the mood to be at sea.

If you wanted to watch the entire Victory at Sea Series, here’s the 28-video series playlist link. It’s a fascinating series to watch.

As always, if I have missed some of your favorites, don’t hesitate to tell me about it! In fact, with this new format, I can add whatever songs you want to the playlist, and then they’ll be available on this article, almost immediately. I look forward to hearing from you about them! The links above represent around 300 sailing songs for you to enjoy while you think about sailing during this Covid-ridden time we’re in. If you’re stuck at home, I hope you get back to sailing soon. May you have fair winds, and following seas!

Here’s the previous sailing song article I wrote as well as a couple of others you may enjoy reading.