An afternoon sharing songs of the sea which is held once a month at the Irish House. This coming session will feature, the “Summerfield’s Starboard Watch Krewe”. The singers have performed at Summerfield  to the delight of the audiences.  It is rare that such lovely and mature women and men get together and  this type of music is great fun. At the open sing people sit in a circle with songbooks containing the words to almost one hundred songs of the sea and the river. During the open sing the Summerfield Starboard Watch Krewe will perform a series of songs for the audience, an audience that fully participates and sings along with the songs.

Sea shanty’s are the songs of the open ocean and the rolling river. Songs that were sung loading cargo on ships and riverboats to lighten the load and make the work more efficient. New Orleans is one of the great ports of the world in in times gone by these songs rang out across the levees and spilled into the city’s streets.

Summerfield Retirement Community is an assisted living center located in Slidell, Louisiana and there resides some wonderful and talented singers who have embraced singing these songs.  This is one of the many activities that residents can enjoy. In addition,  the singers relish the maritime history that is behind these songs and sing the songs as a group with great gusto. Over the course of time they have decided to write a shanty themselves. Looking at a heroic sea Captain’s wife, Eleanor Cressy these singers wrote the world’s newest sea shanty, “Navigator Girl”. This song tells the story of the Flying Cloud and the Captain’s wife who navigated the Flying Cloud round Cape Horn and then to San Francisco in world record time.