Have you seen Fisherman’s Friends on Netflix? It’s fantastic, charming, corny, eccentric, entertaining, everything a good movie should be. In brief, it’s a story about Cornish fishermen who sing sea shanties as they work. 

It just so happens that one shanty in the film is a personal family favorite. I sing it frequently – badly and incorrectly – while I’m driving, cleaning, cooking, annoying my teenager … you know. It was also one of Ken’s favorites. 

About a million years ago, in 2013, we took a family vacation to the Finger Lakes. The trip itself was relatively unremarkable but it had some brilliant moments. The five of us were packed into our 17-year-old Subaru Legacy wagon, with all of our camping gear and our 13-year-old dachshund, Shadow. 

The car was so jammed with stuff that my husband, who hated to drive, insisted on driving for the entire 6-hour trip. There was no way he was going to stuff himself into the back with the dog, two bickering children and a case of potato chip snack bags that some jokester had dumped all over the back seat of the car. 

Anyway, at some point on our trip, Tristan and his dad, both sitting in the front, started singing sea shanties. If you know Ken, you probably heard him sing – he sang frequently – but you might not know that he and Tristan could harmonize perfectly together. 

Whenever I hear the song, I travel back in time to that vacation, sitting in the Subaru on a sunny summer day, listening to Ken and Tristan singing ‘hooray and up she rises’ so beautifully it still sends a shiver down my spine. 

Anyway, go watch Fisherman’s Friends. And maybe raise a glass to Ken when they sing “The Drunken Sailor.”

Much love.