Singer, Song and Source sailing tradition and that tradition included The source... Bob Roberts a lot of men who sang. He liked the whole barging thing, and knew what atmosphere ho was Alfred William ‘Bob’ playing a melodeon and singing in a pub m o c could produce. That was his motive. I’d go . Roberts? y r a ashore with him to a pub and he lit it up r For the folk world, he was a b i l W e proper sailing barge skipper, traditional every time. Everyone liked it, from every r u t c singer and melodeon player. A charismatic age-group. Everyone really joined in.’ i p s performer, he appeared at EFDSS festivals Bob’s daughter, Anne, remembers her n o i t father singing deep sea sailors’ shanties c at the Albert Hall in the 1950s, made a e l l learned when he was a young man, and o series of LPs, and sang at many folk c . recalls how he later came to learn songs w clubs. His contracts to perform always w w associated with inshore fishing and barge specified he would appear ‘winds and y r a tides permitting’ – and if that phrase crews, and also rural songs from old boys r b i L in the pubs around the Essex coast and seems familiar, it’s likely because e r u songwriter Enda McCabe used it as the particularly Pin Mill, where he lived for t c i P chorus for his song ‘Winds and Tides many years with his first wife and young s n family. o Permitting’. i t c Anne and her sister Jill, who today live e l Sailing enthusiasts will say Bob’s claim l o in East Anglia and still play and sing C to fame was that he was the last , l traditional music, do not remember their e commercial barge skipper in Europe to u h father ever learning songs from printed S make a living working an engine-less n a music, and are very much of the opinion i sailing barge on the Thames estuary, and r B that that he learned his songs from other : that he wrote a series of popular books o t people. ‘He had a very good ear,’ says o about his time barging, sailing square h riggers and deep-water small boat Anne. P A big change came in the early 1950s voyages. Later, yachting writer Dick Bob Roberts, EFDSS Royal Albert Hall when Bob met folk song collector Peter Durham wrote Roberts’ biography ( The Festival, 1966 Last Sailorman , 1990). Durham was mate Kennedy. This led to Bob becoming aboard Bob’s famous barge, Cambria, He knew what involved with Kennedy’s BBC Archive during its last 14 months of sailing, and recordings and the influential 1950s radio paints a riveting picture of both the atmosphere playing a series As I Roved Out, and also with the barging trade and his complex and American collector Alan Lomax. Part of talented skipper. melodeon and Roberts’ contribution was that he could It is less well known that Bob Roberts persuade many singers, who were also had another career as a journalist: for singing in a pub otherwise reluctant, to sing for strangers. some years he was a sports writer for the It was from this point also that he Daily Mail , night sub on The Daily could produce ... and came to be in demand on the folk scene, Telegraph and later subeditor on the East he lit it up every time. which lapped up his authentic Anglian Daily Times . performances. He also continued to enjoy Bob’s father was headmaster of the somehow he failed to leave the ship the company of other traditional singers: Hampreston village school in Dorset, and before it left Fowey – and so young Bob people like Bob Copper, Fred Jordan, organist and choirmaster at the local ended up at Liverpool. His biography Phoebe Smith, the lifeboat men at Cromer church. According to family accounts, records that the 15-year old Bob sent his and the singers of Suffolk’s famous pubs Roberts senior regularly took his choir to mum and dad a telegram: ‘Ship didn’t such as the Plough and Sail and the festivals and events along the south coast. stop so am in Liverpool.’ Blaxhall Ship. Ralph Vaughan Williams once came to As an adult, Bob Roberts never really Sadly, however, the world was tea, which Bob said was in order to collect settled into land-side occupations, despite changing. By the late 1960s the Cambria songs from his father. his success in journalism – for him, such could no longer make a living, so Bob sold Roberts junior went to Wimborne jobs were a way of supporting his family, her (see www.cambriatrust.org.uk for Grammar School with a chorister’s and he kept a boat of his own, a fishing details of the restored Cambria ). He scholarship, but while music was clearly a smack named Stormy Petrel , and sailed moved to the Isle of Wight, bought a big part of his life, the sea soon became as often as possible. His trips included motor vessel, the Vectis Isle , and for some an even larger influence. His mother was family holidays along the east coast and years moved cargoes around the Solent, descended from an East Anglian family, fishing expeditions. while continuing to perform regularly. Bob the Browns, one of whom, Louis Brown, Eventually Bob was invited to become Roberts died of a heart attack in 1981 at had sailed around the world. Louis a barge skipper carrying the usual cargoes the age of 74, shortly after he made his Brown’s stories had a big effect on the including bricks, hay and animal feed from last appearance, which was at that year’s young Bob, who soon had a story of his the Thames estuary to the Humber. It English Country Music Weekend – it was own. wasn’t wildly profitable but Bob held at Snape, a port he had visited as It happened that, one day, Bob was supplemented his income writing books barge skipper many times in his career. standing on the quay at Poole watching and articles for the yachting press. Gavin Atkin is a freelance editor and writer the barquentine Waterwitch unloading coal All this time, Roberts seems to have specialising in boating. He is a member of and got talking to the mate – and found been learning songs and tunes from other the ceilidh band, Florida, plays guitar, himself invited to join the crew as cabin lad people wherever he went, and was called fiddle and duet concertina and organises for a trip to Fowey. The young man’s on regularly to perform. Dick Durham traditional music events in Kent parents agreed, and off he went. But recalls: ‘Bob wrote himself into coastal http://singdanceandplay.net 8 EDS spring 2013.