Travellers miss out on the best of a trip by ship or boat if they see it as just a matter of transportation. I'd say sailors, paddlers and rowers instinctively know there's much more to see and think of, not least because our means of transport is relatively slow and we see much more detail than is obvious to someone looking out of the window of a car, train or aeroplane.

So I think we're very aware of a sense of place and time - the history of the body of water and its ports that created that man-made part of what we see of the land around us leaves many tantalising visual clues that are well worth learning about.

Boat users are also very attuned to the vessels that use the waters, which are often developed to suit local conditions and the work required of them. Fishing boats, for example tend to be low to the water to allow their crews to work nets and pots, while the shingle beaches of the South Coast require sturdy, shallow keeled boats, such as those you see at Hastings. And where you find harbours that can only be reached by beating into the trade-winds, you'll usually find traditional boats that are perfectly tuned for that point of sailing.

And then there's the cultural material that comes down to us from the different groups who have used the sea in their own ways - sailors, bargemen and fishermen in particular, and to some extent the fraternity of yachties and traditional boat enthusiasts, to which I belong. It's often the best of the past that survives - the best and most beautiful old boats last longest while lesser examples eventually go to the wall. The same pretty well goes for songs and tunes, I think. I've long been fascinated by both, and the songs on The Running Tide represent an important part of this heritage. Many are great stories played out in a dramatic and hazardous setting: we have cautionary tales, stories about young love, difficult relations between the people of the land and the people of the sea, and the appalling bullying that clearly used to go on in the little dictatorships that were sailing ships in the old days...

And of course many have grand anthemic choruses that are perfect for singing in a bar, after an evening meal on board, or on a hard beat to windward - truly songs for singing sailors. Let's take some examples.

Maggie May is one of the great classic warning songs explaining in clear detail about the way the girls ashore can exploit newly paid–off sailors – though in this case the woman involved gets transported to Botany Bay – which would date the song to the transportation era, which ran from 1788 to 1868, and sea song historian and shantyman Stan Hugill found a reference to it dating back to the 1830s. What's amazing, perhaps, is that people still sing it today... 

The City of Baltimore must be one of the most powerful ballads about the ill–treatment of deep sea sailors anywhere – like all story songs, you have to listen to each verse or the sense of it is lost.

All For Me Grog – You have to have a shanty or two in a collection like this – and this example is full of words that were unspeakably rude centuries ago, but now seem pretty innocuous, but that's only because we've forgotten their meaning. My thanks to Sylvia Needham, Keith Kendrick and Jeremy Waters for their help with the choruses.

Sea Fever is one of the small number of poems that the British regard as national treasures, or used to when I was a kid. Poems set to music often present special problems for singers, as they are so often so packed with meanings that it's difficult to make them comprehensible. But John Masefield's well–loved English language poem Sea Fever works beautifully with this classic old English ballad tune. I feel privileged that the idea came to me as it feels like it's been waiting to happen for rather more than a century...

And finally, let's have an old tune played on a melodeon made back in the 1920s to finish on a light, nostalgic and easy note. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Orkney Rope Waltz!

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