SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS JIMO'KEEFE
The X Have at It The X Seamens Institute record, "Heart of Oak" has now been issued. Beginning with the 18th century title song-a stirring and oddly moving thing, one of those songs where you can't tell whether it's the melody or the associations that does it, but it does ita song which celebrates the relief and triumph of the English at an unexpected and dazzling series of victories in the Seven Years' War, the album romps through a succession of chanties, ditties and ballads that catch the joys and tragedies of the seamen's lot. The X Seamen do a workshop of sea stories, crafts and songs at the National Society's Brooklyn, New York headquarters each Tuesday at seven. Much of this material has been broadcast as "Lure and Lore of the Sea." It is catchy, sometimes uneven, very lively stuff: sometimes an argument ends in song! Those interested in tapes, instructions, materials to make up programs that engage people in this fashion may write the X Seamen here, attention of their leader Bernie Klay (Dan Agiuar, John Townley, Frank Woerner are the other stalwarts, a full history appears in our last issue). NOTE: For Holiday gifts, you can As light faded over the river, the boats pushed off. Their oars fell into the water, pulled by men and boys in torn canvas pants and ragged jerseys. These were the men of Colonel Glover's regiment, come from Marblehead in Massachusetts to New York, to honor what their forebears had done on a rainy, blowy night two hundred years before. Earlier there had been a few speeches, notable ones by Jim Hurley, Director of the Long Island Historical Society, and John H. G. Pell, Chairman of the New York State Bicentennial Commission, and a reading from a Tory play that mocked the exploits of our local hero, General Stirling. There had been the defiant music of fifes, a mutter of drums, the crash of musketry. But a hush was on the river as the boats rowed across it, until they completed their journey on a sandy strip of shore just north of the Fish Market and the masts and rigging of ships clustered in the dusk at the South Street Seaport Museum piers. Then talk broke out among the few hundred people gathered where Fulton Street (called Cadman Plaza now-but we plan to change it back!) runs down from Brooklyn Heights to the water, just south of the cyclopean piers and
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splendid arch and rigging of the Brooklyn Bridge, across the East River from the towers of Manhattan. The people were neighbors, friends, and strangers come at the invitation of the National Society to take part in a reenactment of the evacuation of George Washington's army from Brooklyn on the night of August 29, 1776. Songs were sung, including the X Seamen's stirring "Heart of Oak," and there was dancing and talk till late into the soft summer night, among the people. What everyone remembered and talked of was the boats, small and lonely looking as they went across, with the harbor oiler Stirling following in their wakes like a mother duck anxious for her brood . The next day, as an awakened city went about its business, she towed them back to the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, Long Island, who had lent them for this good service. "We Proudly SerYe the people of the working waterfront.'' -Phil Rando, Prop.
Waterfront Rest. Fulton St. on East River Brooklyn, N. Y.
spread a little joy and benefit the Society by ordering "Heart of Oak" or its predecessor album, "The X Seamen at South Street" for $7.00 postpaid (each) and a book of words and music to thirteen of their best for $1.-ED.
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