Maritime Music Directory International

07/16/2026

Here is this month's MMDI Newsletter!

Email from Maritime Music Directory International, Ltd. We love to hear from you! SEA SHANTIES AND MARITIME MUSIC   Greetings! This is a banner year for tall ships in the United States as scores of ve

07/13/2026

Cook Begins his third voyage (12 July 1776)

James Cook's third and final voyage took the route from Plymouth via Tenerife and Cape Town to New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, and along the North American coast to the Bering Strait.

At Kealakekua Bay, a number of quarrels broke out between the Europeans and Hawaiians culminating in Cook's death in a violent exchange on 14 February 1779. The command of the expedition was assumed by Charles Clerke who tried in vain to find the Northwest Passage before his own death from tuberculosis. Under the command of John Gore the crews returned to a subdued welcome in London in October 1780.

Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_voyage_of_James_Cook

There is actually a musical tie-in to this event! Discover I Killed Captain Cook by the Unknown Mortal Orchestra: https://youtu.be/-nEVvka6jgw.

07/08/2026

Remembering Johnny Collins, May 10, 1938 — July 6, 2009.

Collins was born in Norfolk, England and adopted by a railway worker and a music teacher living in Norwich. He joined the British Army in 1956, where he learned to play the guitar in jazz and folk clubs while posted in London. He was posted to Singapore in 1959 where he began performing in bars and cabarets in his off hours, and was posted to Hong Kong in 1965 where he began performing large concerts with other folk performers in the British and U.S. military.

He also performed on television and radio (including the "Voice of America in East Asia") and played venues like the Hong Kong Hilton. In 1967 he was posted again to Singapore where he began his own folk club at the Anophel Inn. Tom Lewis and Pam Ayres performed there, among others. He was demobilized ("demobbed") in 1968, and he began to perform full-time.

In 1983 he and Jim Mageean, performing as a duo, won the Intervision Song Contest in Rostock, in East Germany. Later, in 1987, they were invited by the East German government to perform at a sea shanty festival in Berlin commemorating the city's founding.

You can learn more about Johnny Collins on his listing on the Maritime Music Directory International. https://seashanties4all.com/groups-artists/johnny-collins/