Sea Chanteys..
Historical Perspective: "Sea Chanteys" Then and Now
The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park's Maritime Research Center is home to the largest library in the National Park Service. Below we highlight a few interesting resources and facts from the Maritime Research Center about the role "sea chanteys" have had upon the maritime industry and the formation of the San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, chantey singing in San Francisco continues to this day.
For over thirty years sea music enthusiasts have gathered on the historic ships, C.A. Thayer and Balclutha, docked at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco to sing chanteys and other sea songs. This in-person event could draw several hundred people, and even during the pandemic, we are hopeful that the virtual chantey sing series will expand to several thousands as the live streaming goes beyond the San Francisco Bay Area and includes singers from around the nation.
The term "sea chanteys" is usually used to describe work songs. These are shorter, with easily repeatable and remembered lyrics to be sung while hauling lines or turning a capstan. "Sea Songs," in general, refers to songs sung about sailors by sailors that reflect upon their time at sea, away from home, and in foreign ports.
For the library enthusiast in all of us, below is a link called the "Chantey Pathfinder" which contains a rich body of music recordings, books, journal articles, and favorites from song leader Peter Kasin who is a Park Ranger at the SF Maritime Park. All of these resources can be found using the search resources of the Maritime Research Center's Chantey Pathfinder here.
Every SF Maritime Association-supported chantey sing event will feature more resources from our friends at the library and collections department.
According to Wikipedia sea shanty, chantey, or chanty (/ˈʃæntiː/) is a genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large merchant sailing vessels. Both Sail and power. The term shanty most accurately refers to a specific style of work song belonging to this historical repertoire. However, in recent, popular usage, the scope of its definition is sometimes expanded to admit a wider range of repertoire and characteristics, or to refer to a "maritime work song" in general.
From Latin cantare via French chanter,[1] the word shanty emerged in the mid-19th century in reference to an appreciably distinct genre of work song, developed especially on merchant vessels, that had come to prominence in the decades prior to the American Civil War although found before this.[2]Shanty songs functioned to synchronize and thereby optimize labor, in what had then become larger vessels having smaller crews and operating on stricter schedules.[3] The practice of singing shanties eventually became ubiquitous internationally and throughout the era of wind-driven packet and clipper ships.
Shanties had antecedents in the working chants of British and other national maritime traditions, such as those sung while manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of the southern United States. Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were then adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail.
The shanty genre was typified by flexible lyrical forms, which in practice provided for much improvisation and the ability to lengthen or shorten a song to match the circumstances. Its hallmark was call and response, performed between a soloist and the rest of the workers in chorus. The leader, called the shantyman, was appreciated for his piquant language, lyrical wit, and strong voice. Shanties were sung without instrumental accompaniment and, historically speaking, they were only sung in work-based rather than entertainment-oriented contexts. Although most prominent in English, shanties have been created in or translated into other European languages.
The switch to steam-powered ships and the use of machines for shipboard tasks, by the end of the 19th century, meant that shanties gradually ceased to serve a practical function. Their use as work songs became negligible in the first half of the 20th century. Information about shanties was preserved by veteran sailors and by folklorist song-collectors, and their written and audio-recordedwork provided resources that would later support a revival in singing shanties as a land-based leisure activity. Commercial musical recordings, popular literature, and other media, especially since the 1920s, have inspired interest in shanties among landlubbers. The modern performance contexts of these songs have affected their forms, their content, and the way they are understood as cultural and historical artifacts. Recent performances range from the "traditional" style of practitioners within a revival-oriented, maritime music scene, to the adoption of shanty repertoire by musicians in a variety of popular styles.
Are you curious about the most popular sea shanty’s?
These are our favorites:
The Very Best Sea Shanties
What Shall We Do with the Drunken SailorRobert Shaw Chorale.
Blow the Man DownRobert Shaw Chorale.
Stormalong, JohnRobert Shaw Chorale.
ShenandoahRobert Shaw Chorale.
Spanish LadiesRobert Shaw Chorale.
The Drummer and the CookRobert Shaw Chorale.
A-RovingRobert Shaw Chorale.
Click this link to hear them:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4BlHGxh6EZFVEkj67aMA5j
Are you wondering what the oldest sea shanty is? One of the earliest references to shanty-like songs that has been discovered was made by an anonymous "steerage passenger" in a log of a voyage of an East India Company ship, entitled The Quid (1832). But who really can know for sure.
The 1920s Sea Shanty Trend
January 20, 2021In 1920s, Headlines from History by Rose Staveley-Wadham
‘Sea shanties are having a great vogue right now,’ reports the Leeds Mercury in January 1927. The writer may well have been describing the sea shanty trend of the present day, as the haunting harmonies of traditional sea shanties once again have captured the popular imagination.
And one hundred years ago, during the 1920s, sea shanties were also incredibly popular. You could listen to them on the radio, or on your gramophone, and they were even performed by MPs.
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The Dundee Courier in April 1926 advertises sea shanties to be broadcast from Aberdeen as part of ‘A Nautical Programme.’ Sung by baritone Robert Watson, and accompanied by the Aberdeen Male Voice Choir, you could expect to hear such shanties as The Liverpool Girls, Shenandoah, Haul Away Joe, and Heave Away, My Johnny.
A month later, in May 1926, the Portsmouth Evening News reports how ‘Sea shanties are to the fore in topical music just now,’ as it reviews a new sea shanty record, which promised to ‘instantly command attention from gramophone owners.’
‘Well rendered and clearly recorded,’ these shanties were performed by Robert Carr and the Seafarers’ Chorus. Including such classics as What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?, Whisky Johnny and Bound for the Rio Grand, the Portsmouth Evening News labels the shanties as ‘real masterpieces of their type.’
Robert Carr and the Seafarers’ Chorus were to release another record in January 1927, available at ‘only half-a-crown.’ The Leeds Mercury gives the following description of these ‘fine sea shanties:’
‘Clear the Track, Let the Bullgine Run’ is a rousing, rollicking shanty that goes with a swing and it is well-matched by the two little ones, ‘Santa Anna’ and ‘The Hog’s-Eye Man’ that accompany it. Rather more of the ballad type, but with a distinctive appeal, are the pair on the other disc, ‘Goodbye, Fare Ye Well’ and ‘We’re All Bound to Go,’ both by R.R. Terry.
So why were sea shanties so popular in the 1920s? The answer lies somewhat in the nostalgia that was felt for a bygone era, as the days of sailing ships faded into a distant memory.
But one man, a Mr. Herbert W. Fison, a retired master mariner, was able to remember the days of sail and the sea shanties that went along with them. He was due to give a radio broadcast in January 1927 entitled ‘Talk on Sea Shanties in the ‘Sixties,’ that is, the 1860s, ‘when Sea Shanties were still in common use on board ship.’
The Portsmouth Evening News gives a summary of Mr. Fison’s talk:
In the Sixties, Mr. Fison, as a boy of 14, was an apprentice on board one of the old ocean going full rigged sailing ships, which have now almost entirely passed out of use, and he will describe something of the toils and hardships of a long ocean voyage in those days, and show how the different kinds of work on board ship had their special Shanties, and the way in which the sailors sang them.
‘Clearing Cherbourg’ | Illustrated Times | 7 August 1858
In December 1928 one Captain Alexander H. Smith was giving another talk regarding the ‘History of Sea Shanties,’ this time to the Arbroath Rotary Club. In it, he confirmed the idea that the popularity of the sea shanty lay in this nostalgia for a bygone era, as reports the Dundee Evening Telegraph:
This was no doubt the reason why it had been so little talked about until the passing of sailing ships had reminded some of them of its help and assistance in time of trouble in their young days.
Indeed, one can imagine that emerging from the most mechanised of any wars up until that point, that the romanticism of the sea shanty, with its complete freedom from modernity and the destruction it had wrought, represented a comforting escape into a world that had long since passed.
The Dundee Courier in October 1928 describes this ‘literary renaissance’ of the sea shanty, but states ‘To hear the shanty in a cozy parlour is one thing, to hear them in their true setting at sea is quite another.’ The writer goes on to invite his reader to imagine:
...a vessel rolling along in the tropics with all canvas set, or labouring in a heavy sea, beating down the Channel or North Sea, or off the Horn. The weather may be icy cold and the gale sufficiently moderated to encourage the skipper to set reef topsails and endeavour to pinch a few miles to the good by ‘head reaching.’ Water may still flow nearly knee-deep across the deck; occasionally a green sea still slops over the weather rail as the crew haul away in the grey light of a winter’s day 50 degrees to 58 degrees north or south, whilst the shanty man eerily sings:
Blow, my boys, for I long to hear you.
Blow, boys, blow!
Blow, my bully boys, blow!
The sea shanties were only sung ‘where the men had any heavy labour to do,’ rendering them perhaps a little less romantic than their whimsical melodies imply. The Dundee Courier reports how there were a variety of different shanties, ranging from ‘capstan shanties, pump shanties, hauling and running shanties.’
Sailors singing sea shanties as they haul on the ropes | The Bystander | 30 July 1930
A ‘famous pump shanty‘ ran as follows:
Fire in the galley, and fire down below,
Leave her, Johnny, leave her,
There’s fire in the galley and fire down below,
And it’s time for us to leave her.
The shanty would end with the command ‘Belay.’
And before the popularity of the shanty faded, MPs Sir James Sexton and Mr. Ben Tillet got in on the act. The Sheffield Independent, 22 April 1931, reports how:
Sir James Sexton, M.P., is to lead the singing of sea shanties in a studio at Savoy Hill to-night. It will be broadcast between 9.45 and 10.15 in the London and Midland Regional programmes.
After a brief descriptive talk on the origin of sea shanties, Sir James, assisted by Mr. Ben Tillett, M.P., Mr. Frank Lowe and Mr. T.F. McCarthy, will sing shanties as they used to be sung on sailing ships.
Whilst we cannot say here at The Archive if history will repeat itself, with our modern day MPs singing sea shanties on the radio, what is undeniable is how these two decades of the 1920s and 2020s, separated by a century, already bear such similarities. And we can’t help but wonder, what other trends of the 1920s will we see repeated in the near future?