The Fisherman's Friends are "Sole Mates" Quiz

Answer: Paradise Street

A more commonly heard version starts: "As I was a walking down Paradise Street". However here we have; "I was drunk as a skunk down on Paradise Street". We have already strayed from the upright sailor image, usually found in the refined song.

Then the sailor meets with a female. The nice version runs "A pretty young damsel I chanced for to meet". Whereas here we have "a minging old strumpet I chanced for to meet". (Translation, a smelly old prostitute.)

In most of the versions the lady is working for the press gang or such like and the sailor ends up as crew on a ship. In this version he merely ends up with an unpleasant disease.

Answer: Lindisfarne

The places in different versions of this song change depending on the ship's destination. For example, a version about returning to London refers to Lizard Point and the Isle of Wight. While one for Liverpool refers to Holyhead and Cape Clear.

This song, being sung by a group from the West Country, has references appropriate to the area. In this case one of the lines runs "Now Hartland Point it is in sight and on the port bow is Lundy's light". Hartland Point is on the North Devon coast and Lundy Island a few miles north of that. But the line "when we reach that Wareham Quay" doesn't fit as the only places I can find called Wareham are the port on the southern coast of England and a forest in Cornwall. Regardless, Lindisfarne isn't mentioned, being far away from the places noted in the song, being off the north-east coast of England.

This song is also traditional, more commonly with the word "Whup" instead of whip, whup being a sort of yell of joy. Which is what the sailors are presumably feeling at heading home.

Answer: Eye

Each of the verses starts "Being a pirate is all fun and games, 'til somebody loses", something. In this case it is an eye. The next line:

"It hurts like the blazes, it makes you make faces, you can't let your mates see you cry".

Apart from the nostril, the other options are also examples given in the song. This is not a traditional shanty, it comes from the writings of Canadian Don Freed.

Answer: Whale

Early in the song we learn that the ship is heading for the Davis Strait, that bit of the North Atlantic between Greenland and Baffin Island. Four hundred miles long, at least two hundred wide and usually very cold. The one-line refrain answers the question:

"And it's cheer up my lads let your hearts never fail, for the bonny ship the Diamond's gone fishing for the whale"

Fisherman's Friends normally sing unaccompanied, occasionally with a single guitar or drum. The version here is no exception. For a contrasting folk-rock interpretation of this song, I recommend the version by Something Nasty in the Woodshed.

Answer: 2nd mate Hawkins

The plot here is that most of the crew mentioned in the song are coming to the end of their turn on watch. It will end when the second mate rings the bell. So naturally they are wishing he would get on with it. With all the fervour of a football team protecting a one nil lead and clamouring for the full-time whistle.

Like most of the songs on the album, this is part of the long list of "traditional" ones. Which simply means they don't know who wrote it. This version has some extra lyrics, in particular the reference to Captain Cleave, which is a reference to one of the singers, Jon Cleave.

Answer: California

Four plausible destinations for a ship leaving Liverpool. Although Birkenhead is only half a mile away across the River Mersey, barely time to get to the end of verse two.

But the song clearly states that the singer is "bound for California by way of stormy Cape Horn".

A frequently recorded song, a sailor singing to his beloved, the chorus ending with; "It's not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me. But the moment when I think of thee."

Answer: The ship was doomed

The second verse starts with the captain telling the crew that "This little Mermaid has told me of our doom. We shall sink to the bottom of the sea". Mermaids have traditionally been seen as a bad omen for sailors. Possibly because what was actually sighted were creatures such as seals, resting on sandbanks and the ships found out the hard way that it was a quick way to wreck a ship.

This song exists under many names and versions but the sites I have looked at suggest the earliest written record to be mid eighteenth century. Of course, oral records are harder to pin down.

Another possible reason for disaster in this song is that the ship set sail on a Friday which, in some parts of the world, is another traditional harbinger of bad luck for sailors. The first few words of the song are "It was on a Friday morn, when we set sail".

Answer: Polka

The answer here is the second (and last) line of the chorus, "Oh you New York girls, can't you dance the polka". Another song of working girls trying to part a naïve sailor from his money. In some versions parting him from his clothes and everything else he owns as well. The chorus also accounts for the alternative title for this song "Can't You Dance the Polka".

The use of the polka seems to date the song to the mid nineteenth century when the polka became known as a dance, but that might just be an adaption of an older song.

Many other recordings of this song exist in various guises and include lines such as "New York girls are tougher than the other side of hell" or "You have to get up early to be smarter than a whore". Two other recordings for comparison are those by Steeleye Span (on the album "Commoner's Crown") and Bellowhead (on the album "Hedonism").

Answer: Silver spade

A shanty about a American sailor and folk hero. In this version, "We dug his grave with a silver spade and lowered him down with a golden chain", provides the answer.
As with all these shanties passed down the oral tradition, many versions are found and recorded. In some variants, Stormalong is replaced with General Zachery Taylor (who later became US President).

Apparently, the song "Stormalong John", (but not this version), is also used in the video game "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag". This is also the case for at least two other songs on this album.

Answer: Eye

In this song, Captain Stormio is a storm, the weather, so his single eye is the eye of the storm. The song is a recommendation to sailors that to stay safe they should stay in port in stormy weather and let the storm blow itself out. This does seem contrary to the proverb "calm seas never made a good sailor".

For a change this song isn't by that prolific writer known as "trad" but is by Jon Cleave of the Fisherman's Friends and former member Billy Hawkins.