MORE than 300 performers will be setting compass points for Teignmouth at the weekend when the Teign Maritime and Shanty Festival get under way.

The free festival is being held over the weekend of September 4 and 5 in various venues across the towns of Teignmouth and Shaldon. This year the singing will be mostly outside, with capacity restrictions for all inside venues.

Featured as one of the six best places to hear sea shanties in Devon and Cornwall, the festival will host 44 sets of musical performers and around 20 maritime events and it is set to be the largest of its kind in the country this year.

As part of the maritime theme a two-masted topsail schooner, the Johanna Lucretia will arrive on Friday afternoon be moored in Teignmouth harbour over the weekend.

On the ship will be 12 lucky people who have purchased berths and will help sail her to from Plymouth to Teignmouth in the preceding week, plus another 12 lucky people to make the return journey after the festival. Festival visitors will be able to board the ship to look around.

Shanties have now gone mainstream, with shanty crews singing at the recent G7 conference and the huge hit by the Scottish postman Nathan Evans, singing “The Wellerman”.

‘Sea shanties are songs, set to a rhythm for working that helped to reduce the monotony of undertaking repetitive tasks aboard ship,’ explained the festival’s chair Kevin Booker.

‘In addition to the singing there will be talks and exhibitions on such things as whaling, shipwrecks, scrimshaw, rope making, knotting, story telling, seaweed harvesting and wooden ship figurehead carving, plus heritage crafts such as crab and lobster pot making and cockle fishing sieves.’

For more visit the website www.teignshantyfestival.co.uk.