The Hoy Shanty Crew (Jack Forbes), 2016

The Hoy Shanty Crew has sprung out of The Hoy at Anchor Folk Club, Southend’s longest running Folk Club, starting in 1970 in Benfleet at The Hoy and taking in various other homes in Southend, Leigh and now in Westcliff at The Royal British Legion presenting music: local, national and international, amateur and professional every Tuesday.

The Shanty Crew are recorded singing “Roll the Old Chariot Along”, not at The Hoy but at Saint Clement’s Church in Leigh at a memorial for Jack Forbes.

Jack Forbes was a stalwart of the club and had been involved with music in and around Southend for decades, as a performer, promoter, song writer and spectator. He has written many, many songs, often with a local flavour, covering the cockle industry in Leigh, Kent and Essex bargemen, the Old Leigh Regatta, and pleasure trips to Southend. He was half of the duo Piertalk with Chris Jones, a member of The Shanty Crew, he played with Slow Loris and had two stand alone shows with them, and many collections of songs and stories, including “Rolling Down the River” and “Down the Hill to The Old Town”. The former contains the song people don’t realise somebody sat down to write, “Rolling Down the River” itself, a rousing shanty about a trip to Tilbury with the OCL. You can find dozens of different versions on YouTube.

His Leigh-on-Sea and Essex credentials are impeccable, but he was born in Scotland.