This page hardly aims to be a complete collection of sea chanteys or an authoritative text on their history and setting. I do want to pass on some of the background information that made chanteys more understandable, and therefore even richer and more enjoyable, for me. What does “John come down the backstay” mean? Where is “Hilo”, “Valparaisa round Cape Horn””, “the leeward side”? Who is this “Bully in the alley”?
In spite of the title of some of the books cited, I stick to the spelling of “chanteys”. It is my understanding that the spelling “shanty” came from an association between the work songs of sailors and other work songs, including field work songs — a natural association, and many of the songs did go back and forth from ship to shore. But the association with the “chant” is far stronger, to me, than the association with the field workers shanty shack. The pronunciation remains “sh” in both spellings. Stan Hugill lists half a dozen theorized origins of the term “shanty” “”chanty” or “chantey” and ends up weighing toward the derivation from “chant” — which in the form “chaunt” was often used to designate field-worker songs in the southern U.S.
The form of the chantey is usually a verse containing one or two “call and response” lines, with a chorus between verses. The form made the chanteys easily memorable and easily paced to the beat of the work being done.
Almost all of the authoritative texts divide chanteys into several classes: those used for jobs where there were many short movements, like pumping; those used for jobs with long steady movements, like hauling the great sails up the long masts; those sung when resting and relaxing; those sung out on deep water; those sung pulling into port and docking. Some of the books state very strongly that the songs for one job would never ever be sung while doing another. Yet I have noticed that what one book called a short-pull chanty another book would call a long-pull chanty, or what one book called a song for singing at rest another book had sailors sing while pulling up the anchor. I have also heard singing groups do similar songs, but one at slow speed and another in “jig time”. I rather suspect that the original singers sang whatever song they liked, at the tempo that fitted the work of the moment.
Enough talking. On with the songs. I have arranged the songs by type.
- Terminology: A Teaching song: The Sailor’s Alphabet. Other useful terminology links: