[1] Hugill was helmsman on the SS Automedon on November 11, 1940 when she was sunk by the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis.

[1] In the 1950s he also taught sailing skills (and sang sea shanties) on the sail-training ship Pamir but was not on its ill-fated last voyage.

He anchored the BBC programme Dance and Skylark from 1965 to 1966, and wrote monthly the column "Bosun's Locker" for Spin (a Liverpool folksong magazine).

When laid up with a broken leg in the 1950s, he began to write down the shanties that he had learned at sea, eventually authoring several books and releasing several LPs of performances later in coordination with a Merseyside folk group called Stormalong John.

As of 1993, the Stan Hugill Memorial Trophy is awarded to the winner of the Tall Ships' Crews Shanty Competition.