The Ship's Company Chanteymen

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #120 (October/November 2005).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Singing the Life of the High Seas

by Pamela Murray Winters

If Maryland -- the small state that's supposedly called "America in Miniature," though this Maryland native has never heard anyone call it that -- is known for anything, it's maritime culture. The home of crabcakes and Old Bay Seasoning is also the home of the U.S. Naval Academy. It's also home to many students and preservers of traditional culture, among them the Ship's Company Chanteymen.

"Back in the Dark Ages -- actually, the early 1980s -- Ship's Company, the greater group of which we're a part, was a living-history group on the USS Constellation in Baltimore," said Myron Peterson, the Chanteymen's business manager. The Constellation, built in 1853 and named for a 1797 frigate that was being dismantled in the same Norfolk, Virginia, facility, helped the African Squadron in the Mediterranean sea intercept slave ships bound for the Americas. Her crew was responsible for the first Union capture of a Confederate ship in 1861. Later, the great three-mast, 22-gun sailing ship helped protect Union ships from Confederate raiders. After she was decommissioned in 1955, she fell into disrepair. Initial efforts to restore her in accordance with 1797 standards failed, but from 1996 to 1999 she underwent a restoration to her 1861 condition and is now open for tours in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

[cover #120]