I've just read on BBC online that recordings of about 800 people singing sea shanties have been found in an attic. The recordings were made during the 1920s by a researcher who toured ports and asked retired mariners to sing into a contraption called an ediphone which recorded their voices on wax cylinders. The recording appear to have been locked away in the attic since they were made. The BBC held a family reunion of the decendants of one mariner who is recorded on one of these rolls without telling them about the recording. Their ancestor, Mark Page, from Sunderland, born in 1836, had run away to sea as a boy. You can imagine how emotional his decedents felt when the recording was played to them. The clip mentions the North East of England, I wonder if all of the recordings were from there or if the researcher ever travelled to Essex? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/7683488.stm Colleen