There was barely room for another sailor at the Mattapoisett Museum on Saturday afternoon.
A standing-room-only crowd of 72 packed the museum on August 15 for an afternoon of maritime music, history and humor with the New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus.
Led by director Tom Goux, 15 members of the 24-voice chorus took the audience on a musical voyage from Boston to the Caribbean and Jamaica, across the Atlantic to England, and eventually back to New England.
With the country marking its 250th anniversary, Goux used the music to trace some of the history and traditions that crossed the Atlantic and helped shape America.
Many of the singers performed from memory, accompanied by an upright bass, fiddle, two guitars and accordion.
The musical journey included “Good Morning Ladies All” before heading south to the Caribbean and Jamaica. From there, the chorus crossed the Atlantic to England, where Union Jack flags appeared along with English eating and drinking songs.
Then came “Cape Cod Girls,” whose verses poke fun at Cape Cod towns and their inhabitants, bringing plenty of laughter from the audience.
The performance also demonstrated the communal nature of maritime music. During one song, all 15 voices came together with the refrain, “The devil takes your soul.”
Audience members joined in throughout the afternoon, but they needed little encouragement when the chorus began “Sloop John B.” The familiar song quickly became a singalong, with voices from throughout the packed museum joining the chorus.
Back in the United States, Goux turned to the events leading to the American Revolution.
Goux told the audience about Rhode Island sea captain Abraham Whipple and his role in the 1772 attack on the British customs schooner HMS Gaspee, an act of colonial resistance that came nearly three years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.
The Gaspee had run aground in Narragansett Bay while pursuing another vessel. A group of Rhode Islanders organized by merchant John Brown set out in longboats, with Whipple placed in charge of the operation. The men boarded the British vessel and later burned it.
The incident helped intensify resistance to British authority in the years leading to the Revolution.
The chorus then brought the afternoon closer to home, singing a chantey crafted in honor of New Bedford’s whaling history and the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey.
The New Bedford Harbor Sea Chantey Chorus is a volunteer musical group associated with the historic schooner. Its repertoire draws from the work songs, ballads and maritime music of sailors and fisherfolk from North America, the Cape Verde Islands and the British Isles.
But the final song of the afternoon carried a more personal meaning.
For an encore, Goux told the audience that the chorus would sing “Rolling Home” in memory of a longtime member of the group who had died just a few weeks earlier.
After an afternoon filled with humor, history and audience singalongs, the mood in the crowded museum shifted as the chorus honored one of its own.
They ended, fittingly, with “Rolling Home.”
By Jeanne Hopkins