Barrouallie Whalers at Mystic, CT

The Barrouallie Whalers who, as I have mentioned previously, have been involved in off-shore whaling on the Caribbean coast of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for some time, have recently been on a concert tour of New England (i.e., the northeast part of the U.S.).



Among their stops was the maritime museum at Mystic, Connecticut, where they gave a demonstration of singing shanties while rowing a whaleboat. This was a unique demonstration, even for Mystic, and even for a festival devoted to maritime music because American whaling was usually done for commercial quantities of oil which was fished for in big boats and tried out for the oil at sea. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines the whaling, from the time of the Caribs, was done for subsistence and done from small boats based on the shore.



These pictures were taken by David Diamond and published on Facebook and are used here with his permission. Mr. Diamond describes himself this way: “I recently retired - a proud grandad, live near DC, have an English accent, like folk music (and write songs myself), Jazz, Blues, chamber music, and fiddling around with computers. Read a lot of science fiction and science fact.”