Acapella group VoicePlay performs “Hoist the Colours.”

Our month of celebrating figureheads has come to an end. If you’d like to know more about real figureheads and their mythology, there are loads of resources—I didn’t spend any time this month talking about the real things because honestly, there are experts out there who have researched and published information that is much more eloquent and accurate than anything I could’ve written; there’s no point in paraphrasing something someone else did much better.

Here are some links if you’d like to learn more about figureheads and what it requires to make them:

The Historic England Blog: A Brief History of Ships’ Figureheads

https://heritagecalling.com/2019/01/31/a-brief-history-of-ships-figureheads/

Martin Jeffrey—Ship’s Figurehead Carving (he’s a real figurehead carver)

https://shipcarve.tripod.com/

Daily Art Magazine: Wild Women of the Waves – Art of Ships Figureheads

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/art-of-ships-figureheads/

Need a little bit of atmosphere to take with you? Here’s an acapella version of “Hoist the Colours” by a group called VoicePlay that’s absolutely unforgettable.

VoicePlay’s rendition of “Hoist the Colours”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8NEsx9m58

“Hoist the Colors,” while many think it’s a legitimate sea chantey, is not. It was written by Hans Zimmer for one of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean films, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy. It’s so good it’s really hard to tell it’s not authentic—and I think it’s a perfect fit with “Carving Grace.”

Haven’t read “Carving Grace” yet? If you’d like to—and you’d like an anthology full of lots of other fun creepy creatures—you can pick up a copy of Wicked Creatures here: https://bit.ly/WickedC