Tonight, the Addison Book Club met on Zoom to discuss Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles which I wrote a blog post about on December 16. We discussed the music mentioned in the book which takes place after the Civil War. Many of the songs were sea shanties. I played one that was mentioned in the book — “Hog-Eye Man.” It is a rousing tune, and we all enjoyed listening to it. Then someone asked “What does “hog-eye man” mean? Someone looked it up. Apparently according to Wikipedia, the term “hog-eye” was used in early blues songs as a euphemism for female genitalia. “Hog-eye man” came to mean a womanizer, a man who is sexually active with women. That is the last time I will share a song with other before looking up its meaning. In my defense, according to the article “Hog-Eye Man” at thelongestsong.fandom.com/wiki/Hog_Eye_Man, the term “hog eye” was a barge used to ship cargo in support of the railway industry particular to the southern United States in the 19th century. They were reputed to have been a design pioneered in Missouri — though records suggest usage as far west as California and as far east as Florida. Hog-eye man is believed to have become a derisive term that ocean-faring sailors used for in-land riverboat sailors. Let’s learn more about these racy sea shanties.
According to Wikipedia, a sea shanty, chantey or chanty 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. They were found mostly on British and other European ships, and some had roots in lore and legend. 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.
Of uncertain etymological origin, 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 were found before this. Shanty songs functioned to synchronize and thereby optimize labor, in what had then become larger vessels having smaller crews and operating on stricter schedules. 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-recorded work 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.
Etymology
The origin of the word "shanty" is unknown, though several inconclusive theories have been put forth. One of the earliest and most consistently offered derivations is from the French chanter, "to sing."
The phenomenon of using songs or chants, in some form, to accompany sea labor preceded the emergence of the term "shanty" in the historical record of the mid-19th century. One of the earliest published uses of this term for such a song came in G. E. Clark's “Seven Years of a Sailor's Life” in 1867. Narrating a voyage in a clipper ship from Bombay to New York City in the early 1860s, Clark wrote, "The anchor came to the bow with the chanty of 'Oh, Riley, Oh,' and 'Carry me Long,' and the tug walked us toward the wharf at Brooklyn." While telling of another voyage out of Provincetown, Mass. in 1865, he wrote:
Every man sprang to duty. The cheerful chanty was roared out and heard above the howl of the gale. The cable held very hard, and when it surged over, the windlass sent the men flying about the deck, as if a galvanic battery had been applied to their hands. The vessel's head was often buried in the solid seas, and the men — soaked and sweating — yelled out hoarsely, "Paddy on the Railway" and "We're Homeward Bound" while they tugged at the brakes and wound the long, hard cable in — inch by inch.
Additionally, Clark referred to a lead singer as a "chanty man," and he referred to stevedores unloading cargo from the vessels as "chanty men" and a "chanty gang."
This reference to singing stevedores as "chanty men" connects the genre to a still earlier reference to chanty-man as the foreman of a work gang and the lead singer of their songs. Around the late 1840s, Charles Nordhoff observed work gangs engaged in a type of labor called "cotton-screwing" in Mobile Bay. Characterized by Nordhoff as one of the heaviest sorts of labor, cotton-screwing involved the use of large jack-screws to compress and force cotton bales into the holds of outbound ships. Work gangs consisted of four men, who timed their exertions in turning the jack-screw to songs called chants.
Singing or chanting is an invariable accompaniment to working in cotton, and many of the screw-gangs have an endless collection of songs, rough and uncouth, both in words and melody, but answering well the purposes of making all pull together and enlivening the heavy toil. The foreman is the chanty-man who sings the song, the gang only joining in the chorus which comes in at the end of every line, and at the end of which again comes the pull at the screw handles ... The chants, as may be supposed, have more of rhyme than reason in them. The tunes are generally plaintive and monotonous, as are most of the capstan tunes of sailors, but resounding over the still waters of the bay, they had a fine effect.
History and development
Emergence
Singing or chanting has been done to accompany labor on seagoing vessels among various cultural groups at various times and in various places. A reference to what seems to be a sailor's hauling chant in “The Complaynt of Scotland” in 1549 is a popularly cited example. Liberal use of the word "shanty" by folklorists of the 20th century expanded the term's conceptual scope to include "sea-related work songs" in general. However, the shanty genre is distinct among various global work song phenomena. Its formal characteristics, specific manner of use and repertoire cohere to form a picture of a work song genre that emerged in the Atlantic merchant trade of the early 19th century. As original work songs, shanties flourished during a period of about 50 years.
Work chants and “sing-outs”
There is a notable lack of historical references to anything like shanties — as they would come to be known — in the entirety of the 18th century. In the second half of the 18th century, English and French sailors were using simple chants to coordinate a few shipboard tasks that required unanimous effort. A dictionary of maritime terms, in describing the anchor-hauling mechanical device known as a windlass, noted the use of such a chant. This particular old-fashioned style of windlass was one that required workers to continually remove and re-insert "handspikes" or wooden leverage bars into the device to turn its gears.
It requires, however, some dexterity and address to manage the handspec to the greatest advantage; and to perform this, the sailors must all rise at once upon the windlass, and fixing their bars therein, give a sudden jerk at the same instant, in which movement they are regulated by a sort of song or howl pronounced by one of their number.
Rather than the well-developed songs that characterize shanties, this "howl" and others were evidently structured as simple chants in the manner of "1, 2, 3!" The same dictionary noted that French sailors said just that, and gave some indication what an English windlass chant may have been like:
Un, deux, troi — an exclamation or song used by seamen when hauling the bowlines, the greatest effort being made at the last word. English sailors, in the same manner, call out on this occasion “Haul-in—haul-two—haul-belay!”
Such simple or brief chants survived into the 19th century. First-hand observers such as Frederick Pease Harlow, a sailor of the 1870s, attested to their ubiquity, saying that they were brought into use whenever a brief task required one. In historical hindsight these items have come to be generically called "sing-outs"; yet even before the known advent of the term shanty, Richard Henry Dana referred to "singing out."
The wind was whistling through the rigging, loose ropes flying about; loud and, to me, unintelligible orders constantly given and rapidly executed, and the sailors "singing out" at the ropes in their hoarse and peculiar strains.
Later writers distinguished such chants and "sing-outs" from shanties proper, but in the case of relatively "simple" shanties — such as those for hauling sheets and tacks — there is a grey area. This has led some to believe that the more sophisticated shanties of later years developed from the more primitive chants.
Early British and Anglo-American sailor work songs
A step up in sophistication from the sing-outs was represented by the first widely established sailors' work song of the 19th century, "Cheer'ly Man." Although other work-chants were evidently too variable, nondescript or incidental to receive titles, "Cheer'ly Man" appears referred to by name several times in the early part of the century, and it lived on alongside later-styled shanties to be remembered even by sailors recorded by James Madison Carpenter in the 1920s. "Cheer'ly Man" makes notable appearances in the work of both Dana (sea experience 1834–36) and Herman Melville (sea experience 1841–42).
When we came to mast-head the top-sail yards, with all hands at the halyards, we struck up "Cheerily, men," with a chorus which might have been heard half way to Staten Land.
The decks were all life and commotion; the sailors on the forecastle singing, "Ho, cheerly men!" as they catted the anchor.
Although "Cheer'ly Man" could be considered more "developed" than the average sing-out, in its form it is yet different from the majority of shanties that are known to us today, suggesting that it belonged to an earlier stage of sailors' songs that preceded the emergence of "modern" shanties.
Detailed reference to shipboard practices that correspond to shanty-singing was extremely rare before the 1830s. In the first place, singing while working was generally limited to merchant ships — not war ships. The Royal Navy banned singing during work — it was thought the noise would make it harder for the crew to hear commands — though capstan work was accompanied by the bosun's pipe or else by fife and drum or fiddle. A writer from the 1830s made this clear:
On board a well-disciplined man-of-war, no person except the officers is allowed to speak during the performance of the various evolutions. When a great many men are employed together, a fifer or a fiddler usually plays some of their favorite tunes; and it is quite delightful to see the glee with which Jack will "stamp and go," keeping exact time to "Jack's the lad," or the "College Hornpipe."
In earlier times, fife and fiddle were also used for work aboard merchant vessels.
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 in 1832. Crew and passengers alike were noted to join in at heaving the capstan around. They were said to sing "old ditties." along with which a few verses to one or more songs is given. While this practice was analogous to the practice of what is later called singing "capstan shanties," the form of these verses is not particularly similar to later shanties. These songs do not appear to correspond to any shanty known from later eras. It is possible that the long, monotonous task of heaving the capstan had long inspired the singing of time-passing songs of various sorts, such as those in The Quid. For example, the composition of capstan-style "sailor songs" by Norwegian poet Henrik Wergeland as early as 1838 implies that Scandinavians also used such songs. However, these older songs can be distinguished from the later type of songs that were given the label shanty, suggesting there were other formative influences that gave birth to an appreciably new and distinctly recognized phenomenon.
Influence of African American and Caribbean work songs
Use of the term "shanty" — once this paradigm for singing had become a comprehensive practice for most tasks — incorporated all manner of shipboard work songs under its definition, regardless of style and origin. Yet, shanties were of several types, and not all had necessarily developed at the same time. "Capstan shanties" — some of which may have developed out of the earlier capstan songs discussed above — are quite variable in their form and origins. On the other hand, the repertoire of the so-called "halyard shanties" coheres into a consistent form. The distinctive "double-pull" format that typifies most of these songs — also at times used with slight changes for pumps, windlass and capstan too — was a later development that appears to owe much to African American work songs.
In the first few decades of the 19th century, European-American culture, especially the Anglophone — the sailors' "Cheer'ly Man" and some capstan songs notwithstanding — was not known for its work songs. By contrast, African workers — both in Africa and in the New World — were widely noted to sing while working. According to Gibb Schreffler, an assistant professor of music at Pomona College, European observers found African work-singers remarkable — as Schreffler infers from the tone of their descriptions. He further infers that that work songs may have been foreign to European culture. Such references begin to appear in the late 18th century, whence one can see the cliché develop that Black Africans "could not" work without singing. For example, an observer in Martinique in 1806 wrote, "The negroes have a different air and words for every kind of labor; sometimes they sing, and their motions — even while cultivating the ground — keep time to the music." So while the depth of the African American work song traditions is now recognized, in the early 19th century they stood in stark contrast to the paucity of such traditions among Euro-Americans. Thus, while European sailors had learned to put short chants to use for certain kinds of labor, the paradigm of a comprehensive system of developed work songs for most tasks may have been contributed by the direct involvement of or through the imitation of African Americans.
The work contexts in which African Americans sang songs comparable to shanties included:
- Boat-rowing on rivers of the
southeastern U.S. and Caribbean.
- Corn-shucking parties on plantations of
the southeastern U.S.
- The work of stokers or "firemen" who
cast wood into the furnaces of
steamboats plying great American
rivers.
- Stevedoring on the U.S. eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean — including
"cotton-screwing" or using a large jackscrew to compress and force cotton bales into the
holds of outbound ships at ports of the American South.
- During the first half of the 19th century, some of the songs African Americans sang also
began to appear in use for shipboard tasks, i.e. as shanties.
An example of a work song that was shared between several contexts, including, eventually, sailors working, is "Grog Time o' Day." This song, the tune of which is now lost, was sung by: Jamaican stevedores at a capstan in 1811; Afro-Caribbeans rowing a boat in Antigua ca.1814; Black stevedores loading a steamboat in New Orleans in 1841; and a Euro-American crew hauling halyards on a clipper-brig out of New York ca.1840s. Other such multi-job songs were: "Round the Corn(er), Sally," "Fire Down Below," "Johnny Come Down to Hilo," "Hilo, Boys, Hilo," "Tommy's Gone Away," "The Sailor Likes His Bottle-O," "Highland Laddie," "Mudder Dinah," "Bully in the Alley," "Hog-eye Man," "Good Morning, Ladies, All," "Pay Me the Money Down," "Alabama, John Cherokee," "Yankee John, Stormalong" and "Heave Away (My Johnnies)."
While the non-sailor occupations noted above were mainly within the purview of Black laborers, the last of them, cotton-screwing, was one in which non-Blacks also began to engage by the 1840s. These workers often came from the ranks of sailors of the trans-Atlantic cotton trade, including sailors from Britain and Ireland who — wanting to avoid the cold winter seasons on the Atlantic — went ashore to engage in the well-paid labor of cotton-screwing. A Euro-American who did just that in 1845 in New Orleans wrote:
The day after our arrival the crew formed themselves into two gangs and obtained employment at screwing cotton by the day ... With the aid of a set of jack-screws and a ditty, we would stow away huge bales of cotton, singing all the while. The song enlivened the gang and seemed to make the work much easier.
Shanty-writer Stan Hugill called Mobile Bay — one of the main cotton outports — a "shanty mart" at which sailors and laborers of different cultural backgrounds traded their songs.
19th century
New ships and new requirements
Writers have characterized the origin of shanties — or perhaps a revival in shanties, as William Main Doerflinger theorized — as belonging to an era immediately following the War of 1812 and up to the American Civil War. This was a time when there was relative peace on the seas and shipping was flourishing. Packet ships carried cargo and passengers on fixed schedules across the globe. Packet ships were larger and yet sailed with fewer crew than vessels of earlier eras, in addition to the fact that they were expected on strict schedules. These requirements called for an efficient and disciplined use of human labor. American vessels, especially, gained reputations for cruelty as officers demanded high results from their crew. The shanties of the 19th century could be characterized as a sort of new "technology" adopted by sailors to adapt to this way of shipboard life.
Recent research has considered a wider range of 19th century sources than had been possible by 20th-century writers. The evidence from these sources suggests that even in the mid-1830s the genre was still developing, which shifts the period of the rise and flourishing of shanties to a bit later than was previously accepted. The general silence of the historical record on modern shanties until as late as the 1840s, even as shipping shifted to the even faster clipper ships, suggests that they may not have come into widespread use until the middle of the century. They received a boost from the heavy emigrant movement of gold rushes in California and Australia. Popular shanties of the 1850s included "A Hundred Years Ago," "One More Day," "Santiana," "Haul on the Bowline," "Across the Western Ocean" and especially "Stormalong."
Heydey and decline
By the time of the American Civil War, the shanty form was fully developed, after which its repertoire grew and its implementation was widespread and rather standardized. The decade of the 1870s represents the zenith of the genre; those sailors who first went to sea after that decade are considered not to have seen shanties in their prime. In 1882, due to the proliferation of steamships, American journalist William L. Alden was already lamenting the passing of shanties.
The "shanty-man" — the chorister of the old packet ship — has left no successors. In the place of a rousing "pulling song," we now hear the rattle of the steam-winch; and the modern windlass worked by steam or the modern steam-pump gives us the clatter of cogwheels and the hiss of steam in place of the wild choruses of other days. Singing and steam are irreconcilable. The hoarse steam-whistle is the nearest approach to music that can exist in the hot, greasy atmosphere of the steam-engine.
Other writers echoed Alden's lament through and after the 1880s; the first collections of shanties appeared in that decade, in one sense as a response to what the authors believed was a vanishing art. Shanties continued to be used to some extent so long as windjammers were, yet these were comparatively few in the early 20th century.
Types of shanties
Broadly speaking, the categories for shanties can be understood in terms of whether the task(s) for which they were used was/were related to hauling or heaving. Hauling or pulling actions were intermittent in nature. They required a coordinated show of focused exertion — not sustained, but rather at specific moments. Shanties for hauling tasks thus coordinated the timing of those exertions, the "pulls." Heaving or pushing actions were of a continuous nature. In these, coordination was of minor importance as compared to pacing. Rather than rhythmically timing the labor, shanties for heaving were more intended to set an appropriate, manageable pace and to occupy or inspire workers throughout the duration of what could often be long tasks.
Types related to hauling actions
Long-drag or halyard shanty
Sung with the job of hauling on halyards to hoist — over an extended period — topsail or topgallant — square-rigged sail immediately above the topsail — yards. Usually there are two pulls per chorus as in "Way, hey, Blow the man down!" Examples: "Hanging Johnny," "Whiskey Johnny," "A Long Time Ago" and "Blow the Man Down."
Short drag or fore/main sheet shanty
Sung for short hauling jobs requiring a few bursts of great force, such as changing direction of sails via lines called braces or hauling taut the corners of sails with sheets or tacks. These are characterized by one strong pull per chorus, typically on the last word, as in "Way, haul away, haul away "Joe"'!" Examples: "Boney," "Haul on the Bowline" and "Haul Away Joe."
Sweating-up or swaying off chant
Sung for very brief hauling tasks, as for a few sharp pulls or "swigs" on a halyard to gain maximum tautness of a sail. These short chants are often classed as "sing-outs," but their form differs little from sheet shanties. Examples include mostly chants that have not gone under any well-known name, along with the better known "Johnny Bowker" and other short-drag shanties.
Hand over hand shanty
Used for lighter hauling tasks, such as setting staysails and jibs or when simply hauling in the slack of a rope. The action is that of tugging alternately with each hand, on each beat.
Bunt shanty
Used for "bousing up" i.e., hauling a bunt — the tightly bunched bundle of a sail that would need to be gathered up and fastened to the yard when furling. "Paddy Doyle's Boots" is universally attested as one of the few, exclusive bunt shanties. However, "Saint Helena Soldier" has also been noted.
Stamp and go, runaway or walk away shanty
Although technically a hauling action, the work accompanied by this type of shanty was continuous in nature. Thus, the songs had longer choruses, similar to heaving shanties. The work entailed many hands taking hold of a line with their backs to the "fall" — where the line reaches the deck from aloft — and marching away with it along the deck.
On vessels of war, the drum and fife or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary movement regulator. There, where the strength of 100 or 200 men can be applied to one and the same effort, the labor is not intermittent, but continuous. The men form on either side of the rope to be hauled and walk away with it like firemen marching with their engine. When the headmost pair bring up at the stern or bow, they part, and the two streams flow back to the starting point, outside the following files. Thus, in this perpetual "follow-my-leader" way, the work is done with more precision and steadiness than in the merchant-service.
As this maneuver could only be used on ships with large crews, such as vessels of war — in which few shanties were sung — shanties to accompany it were few in number and were not often noted in context. The most commonly cited example is "Drunken Sailor," which is thought to be one of the few shanties allowed in the Royal Navy.
Types related to heaving actions
Capstan shanty
Raising the anchor on a ship involved winding its rope around a capstan, a sort of giant winch turned by sailors heaving wooden bars while walking around it. Other heavy tasks might also be assisted by using a capstan. Being a continuous action, shanties sung to accompany these tasks might have longer solo verses and, frequently, a "grand chorus," in addition to the call-and-response form. Examples: "Santianna," "Paddy Lay Back," "Rio Grande," "Clear the Track, Let the Bulgine Run," "Shenandoah" and "John Brown's Body."
Windlass shanty
Modern shanties were used to accompany work at the patent windlass, which was designed to raise anchor and was operated by the see-saw like action of pumping hand brakes. The up and down motion of the brake levers lent the action a binary form that was well-suited by many of the same songs used as halyard shanties. And yet, the continuous nature of the task also meant grand choruses were possible. So, while halyard shanties and capstan shanties tended to be exclusive of one another, windlass shanties sometimes shared repertoire with each of those other types. Examples: "Sally Brown," "Heave Away, My Johnnies" and "Mister Stormalong."
Pump shanty
Because of leakage of water into the holds of wooden ships, they had to be regularly pumped out. The frequency and monotony of this task inspired the singing of many shanties. One design of pump worked very similarly to the brake windlass, while another — the Downton pump — was turned by handles attached to large wheels. Examples: "Strike the Bell," "Fire Down Below," "South Australia" and "One More Day." An example of special note is "Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her" — also known as "Time for Us to Leave Her" — which was generally sung during the last round of pumping the ship dry once it was tied up in port, prior to the crew leaving the ship at the end of the voyage.
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