Essential Information
| Type | Events and festivals |
|---|---|
| Location |
Cutty Sark
|
| Date and Times | Thursday 16 May 2024 | 7pm-9.35pm |
| Prices | Adult: £18 | Members: £16 |
| Discounts available for Members. Not a member? Join now |
“If ever there was a story of survival vs greed, honour vs entitlement, courage and bravery vs careless exploitation, this is it. I believe such a story in living memory needs to be told now, and remembered for the future.”
Songwriter Reg Meuross
About the performance
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Reg Meuross will be joined by historian Brian W. Lavery to present 12 Silk Handkerchiefs, which tells in music and multi-media the story of the disaster and subsequent uprising led by fearless fishwife Mrs Lillian Bilocca.
12 Silk Handkerchiefs, Reg Meuross’s 2018 album inspired by Brian W. Lavery’s book The Headscarf Revolutionaries, opens a window on Hull’s Hessle Road fishing community in the aftermath of the Triple Trawler Disaster of 1968. Joined on stage by stalwart of the Hull folk scene, musician Sam Martyn, Reg’s powerful songs are interwoven with narration from author Brian W. Lavery and an audio/visual show that includes rarely-seen archive footage, photos and audio from the time of the disaster. Three Hull trawlers, the St Romanus, the Kingston Peridot and the Ross Cleveland, perished and 58 men died in what became known as the Dark Winter.
Fighting fishwife Lillian Bilocca’s successfully campaigned for improved trawler safety; sole survivor Harry Eddom who returned to sea just 11 weeks after the sinking; and the superstitions; lives and deaths of all those affected: all of these stories are contained within a fascinating and moving work of social and political history described as Meuross’s “most important work to date” by Pennyblack Music.
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Reg Meuross says: “12 Silk Handkerchiefs is a classic tale of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and the mighty strength of the human spirit. For years the Hull trawlermen and their families fought for survival in the harshest of working conditions: frozen seas with very little safety or protection. It took Lillian and her fellow revolutionaries to fight the companies who were exploiting this community’s poverty and need for work. They took on the Government itself until desperately needed changes in the safety laws were made."
Programme
7pm Doors open
7.30pm Performance starts
8.15pm Intermission
8.35pm Performance resumes
9.20pm Q&A
9.35pm End
The performance will take place in the Dry Berth under Cutty Sark's magnificent hull. Drinks are available to purchase and are permitted in the Dry Berth throughout the evening.
About the performers
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Sam Martyn
Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sam Martyn. Sam is a member of Hull folk band Beggar’s Bridge, the White Horse Ceilidh Band and the Green Ginger Garland dancers, and she also performs solo - when she can find the time! Combining her rich, traditional singing style with piano, low and high whistle, and harmonium, her eclectic repertoire stretches from folk ballads to her own reworkings of musical and popular songs.
Sam says "just the chance to work with Reg, one of this country’s finest singer-songwriters, was in itself amazing, but performing in front of the very people our show was about was something else."
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Reg Meuross
Reg first emerged onto the acoustic music scene in the 1980s with the fast paced duo Panic Brothers and then went on to form the band The Flamingos which featured ex Graham Parker guitarist Martin Belmont, Bob Loveday from The Penguin Cafe Orchestra & Bob Geldof’s Band & Alison Jones of The Barely Works. They recorded one album called ‘Arrested’.
In 1996 Reg decided to go solo and has since released 15 highly acclaimed studio albums. Over the years, solo as well as with many other acclaimed artists, Meuross has toured the length and breadth of the UK and also in the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Accompanying his soulful tenor vocal with guitar, harmonica and dulcimer, Meuross paints pictures in words and music that resonate long after the song has been sung. Protest songs, love songs and historical characters all feature in his extensive repertoire.
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Brian W. Lavery
Brian W. Lavery was born in Glasgow’s East End in 1959. He has been a factory worker, car valet, market trader, waiter, university dropout, VAT officer (very briefly) and latterly a journalist, university tutor and writer. After more than twenty-five years of various senior roles in national and regional journalism he returned to higher education and gained a first in English literature and creative writing at the University of Hull. His book, The Headscarf Revolutionaries (Barbican Press, 2015) – now optioned by a major television production company – derived from a funded PhD at that university, where he taught creative non-fiction. His new book The Luckiest Thirteen, the story of the St Finbarr 1966 Christmas Day trawler disaster established itself as another best-seller for Barbican Press.
Other works include his programme for BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought series, Courage and Effect, and being commissioned by the Oxford University National Dictionary of Biography (‘the biographer’s Bible’) to write the entry on Mrs Bilocca, aka Big Lil.
"A finely spun tribute… rich in honest emotion, deep humanity, resonant lyrics and infectious melodies."
Mike Davies, Folking.com
“Meuross has achieved something rare and important: he has reanimated a valuable piece of history, and he has done so with great sincerity and emotional depth. 12 Silk Handkerchiefs is a fitting tribute not just to Lillian Bilocca, but to the power of individuals to bring about change for the better."
Thomas Blake, Folk Radio UK
"Further confirming Reg Meuross as one of the most eloquent and compelling singer-songwriters ever."
David Pratt, Fatea Magazine
This event is part of commemoration of the National Fishing Remembrance Day.
The event is kindly supported by The Seafarers' Charity and Seafish.
Tickets
Please note that a non-refundable booking fee is added to each transaction, but there is no booking fee for Members.
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