Nautical Shanties: Maritime Work Songs and History

There is no better example of a work song than the nautical shanty. A leader, or shantyman, conveniently perched on the ship or dock within hearing of the hardworking sailors and stevedores, bellows out stanza after stanza to a regular rhythm carefully chosen to abet the task at hand, pausing after each stanza for a hearty refrain or chorus from the workers. Some shanties had brief staccato choruses in which the words themselves clued the sailors as to when to pull, hoist, or push, as on the last word of each stanza, “haul,” in “Haul on the Bowline.” Shanties are classified according to the type of work they are meant to accompany. Hauling songs, for intermittent operations, include short-drag shanties for short tasks where only a few strong pulls were needed; halyard, or halliard, shanties, also called long-drag shanties, were for longer and heavier intermittent tasks, such as hoisting sails; hand-over-hand shanties were for hoisting light sails; walk-away shanties were for the easier job of taking up slack in a line; and bunt shanties were for stowing a sail on the yard. Heaving songs for a continuous task are windlass or capstan shanties, for catting anchor (i.e., hoisting and securing), or pump shanties.

In spite of the elaborate terminology, a comparison of different shanty collections and accounts indicates that certain songs served equally well at different tasks, so that determining the shanty type from the song itself can be difficult. Shanties might have been accompanied by a fiddle or accordion at one time, but in later years, every hand was needed, and shanties were sung without accompaniment.

There is evidence that shanties were sung by British sailors as early as the sixteenth century, and American shanties were derived partly from their British antecedents but with considerable African American infusions due to the common use of slave and exslave labor on ships and docks. Many nineteenth-century shanties and dock songs are descended from the blackface minstrel stage or plantation songs. In spite of the age of shanty singing, the word “shanty” itself seems not to have been used before the mid-1800s and first appeared in print in 1869. It has also been spelled “chantey” or “chanty,” on the (mistaken) assumption that the term derived from the French verb chanter, to sing.

Notwithstanding the antiquity of the custom, shantying had fallen into disuse during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to be deliberately revived in the early nineteenth century. Most American shanties originated in the period 1820 to 1860, the peak years of American packets (small vessels carrying passengers, goods, and mail on fixed routes, especially on rivers or along coasts) and transatlantic clippers (fast ships designed for speed). The introduction of steam and mechanization diminished the need for manual labor after the Civil War, and shanty singing declined accordingly.

One of the best-known shanties, “Haul the Bowline,” still makes for a rousing experience when sung by a shantyman and chorus. Possibly the oldest-known short-haul shanty dates from the days of King Henry VIII, because the “bowline” as a nautical term for ropes has not been used since the early seventeenth century (it now refers to a type of knot). The first couplet usually functions as a refrain in that it is repeated after every other stanza, but it is sung to the same tune.

Not all shanties are so obviously work songs. “Shenandoah,” a capstan shanty, is often sung in venues where there is not a trace of salt spray. “Shenandoah” is a good example of a landlubber’s song shanghaied and carried off to serve duty as a work song. Versions from other sources do not preserve the unmistakable evidence of a storyline, as does this one. Modern listeners may justly take offense at the negative portrayal of Native Americans, but this is the way the song was sung. Without question, the song’s chief charm is its beautiful tune, and for that reason, it is continually re-recorded in collections of musical Americana.

Some of the best of the nineteenth-century shantymen were African Americans, but chances are not all of them plied their skills voluntarily. “Mobile Bay” is an example of the African American shantyman’s art, probably originating as a work song in the cotton fields of the Deep South. By replacing the word “pump” with “heave,” it could be used as an ordinary capstan shanty.

“Mobile Bay” probably moved from the cotton fields to the shantyman’s domain via the intermediary, the riverboat. In the nineteenth century, the major American rivers (including the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio) were important transportation arteries, and their dock cities bustled with workers loading and unloading rafts and steamboats.

“I'm Goin’ Up the Rivuh” was a favorite song that the singer could use to extemporize on the hardships of the life of the deckhand. It was sung along the Mississippi by the African American workers.

In the early 1800s, whalers along the eastern seaboard made their livelihoods hunting the huge mammals for their bone, skin, oil, and flesh. An encounter with one of the leviathans could be fraught with danger when the hunter and the hunted exchanged roles, as Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick reminded readers. Today’s newspapers are filled with stories about whaling, but now the issue is an environmental one: Are we hunting these creatures to extinction? That possibility was too remote to be taken seriously two centuries ago. Just as the stampede was the cowboy’s dreaded fear, whalers quaked over the prospect of a fatal encounter between the small whaling boat and its prey. “The Greenland Whale” was widely sung through the nineteenth century and even earlier.

The ballad is of English origin and dates back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, if not earlier. One must not place too much trust in the date listed in the first stanza because other versions diverge widely. In a few versions, the captain declares that the failure to secure the whale is more regrettable than the loss of his crewmen, but although this makes for a good tale of occupational greed and managerial callousness, it was not a typical sentiment.

Not every ballad about seafarers concerns those who made their livelihoods on the water. Every age has had its civilian maritime disasters; even the great technological achievements of the twentieth century were not sufficient to render it immune. On April 15, 1912, the steamship Titanic—only four days out of Southampton, England, bound for the United States on her maiden voyage—struck an iceberg and sank, sending some 1,500 people, more than two-thirds of those aboard, to a watery grave. The Titanic has left a deep mark on the culture of America, from movies and songs to poems and books. The facts in the story—the construction by one of Britain’s preeminent shipbuilders, the decision to ignore advice to take precautions against complete loss of buoyancy in the event of a hull penetration, the failure to provide sufficient lifeboat accommodations— have all been told in numerous accounts. The rumor—never substantiated—that those on board who went down with the ship were singing the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was reported in newspapers within days of the disaster and captured the imagination of singers and songwriters alike immediately thereafter.

What is worthy of separate examination is the image of the Titanic reflected in popular musical traditions of the decades immediately after 1912. This vessel, to which the epithet “unsinkable” clung like drowning men to a raft, was the subject of over 100 copyrighted popular songs soon after it sank. Although few of these endured more than fleeting popularity, in other, folkier genres, the Titanic’s story was sung and resung over and over for several decades.

Several other themes, not particularly factual, recur in songs and other lore about the Titanic: the overconfidence of the builders, the notion that the rich fared much better in escaping death, and the irresponsibility of the captain himself. In the following version, the penultimate stanza (about St. Paul) seems totally irrelevant unless one realizes that the song’s real purpose is not to recount a specific tragedy but to warn one to place faith in God’s hands rather than in the less dependable ones of man.

FURTHER READING: Doerflinger, William. 1951. Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman. New York: Macmillan.

Rickaby, Franz. 1926. Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Stearns, Marshall. 1958. The Story of Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press.