Back in the January of 2015 a group of fathers gathered in the frost-covered yard of Caistor Primary School in Lincolnshire waiting to collect their young ones.  A few of the men got to chatting about the forthcoming fund raising event, held each year by the ‘Friends’ committee.  The prior year a group of Mums had performed on stage to high acclaim and laid a challenge to the men to ‘do their bit’.  The pressure was on!

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A few rehearsals in the local pubs and the Caistorways was born.  Singing a handful of popular Sea Shanties, the dozen dads hailing from within a cast net of the fishing towns of Grimsby and Hull, got a taste for harmonies (and the ale that inevitably went with rehearsals!).

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Eight years on, the crew has grown to a couple of dozen, and continues to raise funds for community causes through Lincolnshire and beyond.   Their primary beneficiary being the RNLI, who work tirelessly to save lives at sea.

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The Caistorways first album acknowledges those lives lived and lost at sea.  From Don’t Take the Heroes, written for the Penlee Lifeboat disaster of 1981 to Three Score and Ten, marking the tragic events of February 1889 when gales wreaked havoc up and down the East coast and as many as 15 boats were lost along with their crews of between 70 and 80 men.

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With a few traditional folk songs cast in for good measure, we hope you have as much fun singing along as they join us at the Gateway to Southwell – Haul Away! 

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