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Sea shanties are blowing up because of viral Tiktoks and it is overdue in my opinion! Sea shanties are not just sailors' songs - they are a means of archiving and sharing information, as well as facilitating types of work. A #seashanty thread. https://twitter.com/BloodyDeath11/status/1348759448337186816
Many people know sea shanties from Hollywood movies like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or video games like Assassin's Creed Black Flag. While sea shanties are catchy tunes, the actual songs have deeper meaning.
Sea shanties contain important information for sailors in periods where they might not be literate or able to carry maps. Take the famous "Spanish Ladies" which on the surface is about women, ranting, and roaring. In reality, it codifies navigation info.
Here are some lyrics not about ladies:
"Until we strike soundings
In the Channel of old England,
From Ushant to Scilly 'tis thirty-five leagues...
So the first land we made, it is called the Deadman,
Next Ram Head, off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and the Wight"
"Until we strike soundings
In the Channel of old England,
From Ushant to Scilly 'tis thirty-five leagues...
So the first land we made, it is called the Deadman,
Next Ram Head, off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and the Wight"
This is a nautical chart from Spain to Britain: soundings are depth measurements at sea, there is the distance measurement between Ushant, France, to the island of Scilly, a deadman is a spot for tying off a ship on shore, and the subsequent locations are west-east visual markers
So what we see here is a song as a method of archiving and sharing important information. It certainly isn't the first time song has been used for preserving information (e.g. Aboriginal songlines). The other purpose for sea shanties is for facilitating work.
The rhythms among sea shanties relates to the type of work that they were meant to guide. For example, there are heaving/hauling shanties, which were sung while heaving/hauling on lines. Cpt Johnson explains the ha-he rhythm in 1929 Around Cape Horn
This work-based design is why sea shanties typically don't have instruments and there is often a call-and-response, as there is one person leading the group on the work/song. Leave her Johnny is an examples in 4/4 time with lines 2 and 4 sung in chorus.
Sea Shanties are quite simple so that they keep the rhythm of work, but also so they can be shortened or extended for the duration of the work. Sea shanties like "Haul on the Bowline" straight up tell you what they're designed for.
The call-and-response format of sea shanties later re-emerged in popular music. The Pogues used the sea shanty style in a number of songs with South Australia borrowing a hauling-style rhythm and call-and-response.
That's a brief intro to sea shanties and why they're so distinctive. There's more nuance - naval vs merchant songs - which I'll defer to specialists, as my knowledge of sea shanties comes from working on tall ships and maritime history as it relates to shipwrecks I've found. Fin.
Important note- the role of Black sailors. I saw a SHA or SAA presentation a few years ago on major % of Black mariners in 19th c. merchant navies and the role of Black work songs in the development of sea shanties- pls post if anyone knows the research.
In the English Folk Dance and Song Society archive you can listen to recordings of shanties showing the influence of Black music. The attached images shows a Black musician atop a capstan playing a hauling shanty in 1832. https://www.efdss.org/55-resources/learning-resources/4079-black-sailors-shanties
Black sailors appear in the English navy as early as the Tudor Period and were a major & of later merchant navies - and especially pirate vessels, who offered a more egalitarian shipboard society. So Black sailors had a role in sea shanties from the start. https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/researchers/research-guides/research-guide-finding-black-and-asian-sailors
If you have the itch, Spotify has a playlist of Assassins Creed's remastered sea shanties: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/13pMPjxIFTdbP27196dAFA?si=7zrD_CC4Re6vAIq0P8qjoA
Do sea shanties have a future in the 21st century? The workplace may no longer need work songs. Perhaps the call-and-response and repetitive rhythms could be re-emerge in protest songs.
Probably the best of the tiktok shanties. https://twitter.com/Beertheist/status/1348759849077714951?s=20
Here's a great video of a crew singing while coming into harbour, though most of them aren't actually hauling. Thanks @liberalicious
