shanty

shanty, or chantey, pronounced ‘scanty’ by the seamen who sang them, a song sung on board during the days of sail to lighten the labour of working a merchant ship. However, they were not actually called by this name until after 1834, as Richard Dana does not give them this name in his book Two Years before the Mast which was published in that year. The earliest known example of this type of song, to coordinate the efforts of men working on the capstan bars, occurs in the Complaynt of Scotland, published about 1450, and ‘Haul the Bowline’ must be very nearly as old, as in the earliest days of sail the bowline rope was the most important one in a sailing ship.

The words of many shanties often varied from ship to ship, sometimes to incorporate local personalities or to lengthen the words of a song; if the words ran out before a task was completed, a good shantyman, who led the singing, could improvise new words to keep the song going without a break. But though the words might differ, the tunes never varied.

They were broadly divided into two classes: the capstan shanties, designed to produce a continuous effort such as would be required from men heaving on the capstan bars; and halyard shanties, where the accent was placed on occasional words or notes to encourage the men to pull together, as when swaying up a spar. They all follow the same pattern, with short solo verses and rollicking choruses, with a shantyman to lead the singing. Many shanties became famous as much for their tunes as for their words, such as ‘Shenandoah’, ‘Rolling Home’, ‘Billy Boy’, ‘Bound for the Rio Grande’, and ‘Blow the Man Down’. Perhaps the best known today is the one Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) put in his novel Treasure Island (1883):Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's Chest,
Yo ho ho! And a bottle of rum,
Drink and the Devil had done for the rest,
Yo ho ho! And a bottle of rum.
Shanties were essentially merchant marine songs, and were rarely heard in warships, where work was traditionally carried out in silence. Also, merchant ships were frequently undermanned so that the owners might make more profit, and to make up for the lack in numbers a shanty was necessary to coordinate the efforts of each man. Warships, on the other hand, were, by comparison, overmanned. The large number of men required to work the guns in battle were almost always available for duties which required a heavy effort, such as weighing an anchor or swaying up a main yard. See also sea songs. Carr Laughton, L. G. , The Mariner's Mirror, 9 (1923), 48, 66.