Tales That Defy the Ordinary

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Shanties Ahoy! The history of sea songs

Before engines, men moved ships. And to move men, you needed a rhythm. This is the raw, rowdy truth behind sea shanties — the soundtrack of survival. 

Picture this: a wooden hulk groaning under salt and sweat, sails snapping in the relentless wind, a dozen bedraggled men pulling ropes like their lives depend on it—because they do. How do you keep that ragged crew from throwing each other overboard or jumping first chance?

You don’t just bark orders.
 You sing.

Welcome to the brutal, bawdy, beautiful world of sea shanties. These weren’t quaint folk tunes for your mum’s Sunday choir. No, these were the work-songs of the damned and the determined. The soundtrack of survival, forged by men who had one hell of a job and an even hellier thirst for camaraderie.

If the sea was the mistress, the shanty was the coping mechanism.

The ropes are slack, the song on pause — tomorrow the work begins again. 

Not Born on the Waves, But Dragged from Shore Leave

Contrary to what your mate down the pub insists after three pints of Tribute and a fishfinger sandwich, sea shanties weren’t “invented” by some mythical band of old salt mariners pounding on barrels in perfect harmony.

They were stolen. Repurposed. Bastardised.
 Shanties were musical contraband.

Sailors borrowed land-based work songs, pub ballads, West African call-and-response rhythms, Caribbean laments, and American railroad hollers. They stripped them down, roughed them up, and nailed them to the mast.

A shanty was a tool — a metronome for misery.
Less pretty melody, more musical whip-crack.
Not “sing because you’re merry,” but “sing or your fingers get caught and your ribs break.”

The Cultural Gumbo That Made the Shanty

If you're looking for a tidy origin story, abandon ship now.

Sea shanties weren’t born — they were brewed. Like rotgut rum, and just as volatile. Every port added flavour. Every crew, every nation, every dockside drunk, every enslaved man forced to labour — all contributed to the mix.

  • Irish and Scottish folk tunes made their way from pub to prow, often warped by memory and strong drink.

  • French chanteys and Spanish sailor songs were smuggled aboard, their lyrics rewritten with filth, fury, and a universal fondness for grog.

  • Most crucially, West African and African-American work songs — with their relentless call-and-response, syncopated beats, and resistance threaded through the rhythm — gave the shanty its bones.

Aboard ship, there were no national anthems. Just rhythm. Just noise. Just men trying not to die.

As historian and ex-seaman Stan Hugill put it:

“The chantyman’s job was to inject fire into the muscles of a weary crew.”

And if the rhythm faltered, everything else followed. Ropes snarled. Fingers snapped. Masts cracked.

Songs That Kept You Alive (and in Time)

Shanties weren’t sung for beauty. They were sung for timing. For survival. For order amid chaos.

Each task had its own rhythm — and its own song.

  • Capstan shanties were slow and relentless, suited for anchor-hauling — long, drawn-out drudgery that needed steady pressure.

  • Halyard shanties were quicker, used for raising sails. You pulled on the chorus. If you were late, you risked breaking the line — or your spine.

  • Short-drag shanties were for fast, violent pulls. Think “Haul Away Joe.” You didn’t have time to admire the harmony — you shouted, you yanked, and you hoped no one lost a hand.

The chantyman — the lead singer — had one job:
Keep the rhythm. Keep the crew together. Keep the ship afloat.

If you think that’s overstated, ask a sailor what happens when ten men pull at the wrong time.

Famous Shanties (And the Filthy Ones Too)

Some of the songs made it to shore.

  • “Drunken Sailor” — a halyard shanty turned nursery rhyme. The original verses were about flogging, shaving, and unspeakable acts with cod.

  • “Blow the Man Down” — another favourite, with roots in both Liverpool and New York, depending on who’s lying.

  • “Leave Her, Johnny” — traditionally sung at voyage’s end, when it was finally safe to mock the captain without ending up in irons.

Others were too vulgar for preservation — lost to time and the prudery of folklorists. Let’s just say there was a lot of interest in “Nancy from London” and very little left to the imagination.

Steam, Silence, and the Death of Rhythm

But nothing kills a good song like progress.

By the late 1800s, steam engines replaced muscle. Winches replaced hands. Orders replaced rhythm. And with it, the shanty began to die.

Captain W.B. Whall, a rare sailor-scholar, mourned the loss in 1910:

“The steam winch has spoilt the shanty.”

What it really spoilt was the soul of the ship.

No chantyman. No timing. No singing. Just the hiss of steam and the chug of progress. Efficiency improved, but morale didn’t. The age of sail slipped away, and the shanty — that filthy, fierce, necessary song — drifted into memory.

TikTok, Folk Revival, and a New Sea-Borne Chorus

But here’s the twist: the shanty refused to stay dead.

In the mid-20th century, folk collectors and revivalists dug into the archives. Stan Hugill’s Shanties from the Seven Seas became the new Bible of the genre. Folk festivals rang with the old rhythms, now cleaned up for polite society.

Then came 2021. TikTok. A Scottish postman singing “Soon May the Wellerman Come” into his phone. And suddenly, 150-year-old sea songs went viral.

Shanties were back — not as museum pieces, but as living, breathing music.
Not sung to raise anchors, but to raise eyebrows, spirits, and YouTube views.
The internet had discovered what sailors always knew: work is better with a chorus.

More Than Melody: What the Songs Were Really About

Beneath the rhythm was rebellion. Beneath the melody was misery. Shanties weren’t just functional — they were expressive. Communal. Cathartic.

You sang to pass the time.
You sang to complain about rations, storms, incompetent officers.
You sang about women in ports you barely remembered and diseases you hadn’t quite shaken.

And you sang because it was the only thing the captain couldn’t confiscate.

Sailors couldn’t read. Couldn’t write. But they could sing. And in the verses — dirty or dignified — they told the story of life at sea:
The homesickness.
The hunger.
The half-mad joy of surviving another gale with your limbs intact.

Shanties weren’t entertainment.
They were therapy.
Loud, rhythmic, slightly obscene therapy.

Sailors walking in circles at a ship’s capstan, pushing wooden bars to raise the anchor while singing a capstan shanty.
The capstan was the ship’s brute winch — sailors shoved bars, marched in circles, and dragged the anchor inch by inch. The grind was endless, so the songs had to be too: long verses, big choruses, call-and-response rolling on until the iron came free. Among them — Santianna, Paddy Lay Back, Rio Grande, Clear the Track, Let the Bulgine Run, Shenandoah, even John Brown’s Body. Original image can be found on wikipedia

A Toast to the Chorus: Why Sea Shanties Still Matter

So next time someone dismisses a sea shanty as just “some old sailor song,” you can tell them this:

It’s not just a tune. It’s centuries of culture, grit, and human endurance disguised as rhythm.
It’s the sound of men in chaos finding unity.
It’s global history set to a 4/4 beat.

You can keep your AutoTune pop hits. We’ll take “Roll the Old Chariot Along” — belted out by men with splinters in their teeth and a storm in their lungs.

Raise your voice. Raise your glass.
And if you hear the chorus coming over the waves, don’t just listen.
 Sing.

 

“A Drop of Nelson’s Blood,” a spirited sea shanty also recognized as “Roll the Old Chariot Along,” was brought to life through the resonant vocals of David Coffin in his rendition.

Main Image credit  Francesco Ungaro at unsplash.com

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