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FOXBORO - Foxboro resident Mary Malloy not only enjoys hearing the sea roar, she knows the words.

Malloy is an expert in maritime history - and shipboard music, too.

Her voice can be heard on four CDs of traditional sea music, including - get this - one called "Pirate Songs."

The author of four books on maritime trade, Malloy is on the faculty of the Sea Education Association at Woods Hole.

Last Tuesday night, she spoke to the Foxboro Historical Society about "Devil on the Deep Blue Sea: The Notorious Career of Captain Samuel Hill of Boston," her 2006 book. Originally from Spokane and Seattle, Wash., Malloy lives in Foxboro with her husband Stuart Frank, who, appropriately, is senior curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

This interview was conducted by e-mail.

SUN CHRONICLE: So, what drew you to explore maritime history?

MARY MALLOY: Ships, of course, which first fired my imagination.

As I learned more about who was on the ships, where they went, and what they carried I became more and more interested in the interactions between sailors (especially New Englanders) and the people with whom they came into contact in different places around the world (especially on the Northwest Coast). These were mostly young men, separated from the socializing context of family and society, who ended up in places where they didn't know the language or culture and became the first representatives of the United States.

SC: What made Sam Hill notorious? What inspired your book about him?

MALLOY: Sam Hill was a Forrest Gump sort of character who ended up at a number of important historical events.

He was the first American to live in Japan, was in the Columbia River when Lewis and Clark were there, was captured as a privateer during the war of 1812, witnessed the Chilean Revolution and met Kamehameha, the great King of Hawaii. I found him a useful device for looking at the expansion of American trade in the first years of international trade after the Revolution.

SC: I hear you're an authority on shipboard musical traditions. What's your favorite?

MALLOY: That changes regularly as I learn new songs. My husband, Stuart Frank, who was formerly the director of the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon and is now the senior curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, has done extensive research on songs sung on shipboard using sailor journals as his source. Sometimes the things that attract me to songs are not the lyrics or the melody, but the notion that some sailor scribbled the words to a song he sang in his shipboard diary and I can open that volume two hundred years later and sing the same song. SC: And, what's your favorite pirate song?

MALLOY: There's a song called "The Coast of Barbary" that is about 350 years old, and is on the CD "Pirate Songs," available at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. (It includes me and Stuart, and the late Robert Kotta, who was a schoolteacher in Mansfield.)

That said, I do not in any way want to romanticize pirates. Stuart has written a "Book of Pirate Songs" and the largest number of them describe the defeat of pirates, which of course would be desirable to common sailors. I think recent events in the Indian Ocean are putting pirates into a more correct perspective than Walt Disney.

SC: You've written extensively about maritime trade. What's been your biggest surprise, as in "Most people don't realize this"?

MALLOY: Most people don't realize how many of our consumer goods still arrive on ships.

SC: How about modern maritime trade? Any suggestions for improving it? Do you visit the docks in, say, New Bedford, and talk to the captains about what things are like now?

MALLOY: I'm interested in the environmental aspects of contemporary maritime trades, and study those with my students in the Sea Semester program in Woods Hole. We look at regulations regarding pollution, fisheries stock management, climate change and at the impact of cruise ships in the Caribbean. We often go to New Bedford and talk to captains.

SC: Do you enjoy kayaking, canoeing or other outdoor activities on the water?

MALLOY: I love sailing and teach in a program that has two ships, one in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific, so I get a chance to get out on the water.

SC: And, where's the best seafood in New England?

MALLOY: If I want fish I go to Legal Sea Foods. I'm from the Northwest and so prefer wild Alaska salmon to anything else. For scallops you have to go to New Bedford, the NO. 1 port for them, and Davy's Locker is a great old-fashioned seafood place right on the water. The scallops there are great.

SC: What do you do for fun when you're not teaching?

MALLOY: I do a lot of writing. My first novel, "The Wandering Heart," will be published in April (and it's already available on Amazon). I'm working on another novel now, set in Ireland in the 13th century.