Organisers of the two-day festival to be held on Saturday and Sunday May 24 and 25 are expecting thousands of people to attend following the cancellation of Cleethorpes Folk Festival, which was due to be held the same weekend.

Musicians are travelling from a wide area to take part in the festival, which will be centred on the pubs and hostelries around Beckside, while the historic waterway will be filled with barges and boats including traditional keels and sloops.

Neville Holgate, chairman of the Beverley Barge Preservation Society, said the festival looks set to almost double in size, following the Cleethorpes cancellation.

Beverley Shanty Festival is a free event.

“It looks as if we will be flooded with people. Things are really taking off - obviously everything depends on the weather but if it is kind to us there will be massive activity down Beckside,” he said.

At least six barges which used to ply the Beck are expected to be among the boats heading back.

Entertainment will include shanty singers, musicians and dance groups, with performances of traditional shanty music at pubs throughout the area.

Stalls will also be set up in the community area alongside the waterway.

The festival is also expected to bring a major boost to businesses, with local hostelries anticipating a bumper weekend.

The event will be the first time for more than 100 years that a festival has been held on the Beck, which was at one time a venue for water festivals.

Organisers describe it as a celebration of the regeneration of the area, linked with the 60th anniversary of the Syntan barge which is moored at Crane Wharf.

Keith Jenkins, who is landlord of the nearby Hodgsons pub, welcomed the festival. “With the amount of effort that the organisers and the people in charge of the singing are putting in, I think it will be a success. It will bring in customers we would otherwise not have got, and the more people who come, the better it will be,” he said.

John Marson, whose Foresters Arms pub at the head of the Beck will host a barbecue and performances by most of the festival artistes, is looking forward to a busy weekend.

Although the Beck area has undergone a major transformation in recent years, Mr Marson said that it seems latterly to have been forgotten again.

“We need an uplift and hopefully this will be a busy weekend, with it being Beverley Races as well,” he said.