A chanty (pronounced shanty) was a working song, sung by seamen on sailing ships before the day of steam. Its purpose was to lighten the hard, monotonous labor of a sailor’s life. The landsman, perhaps, may wonder at the great variety of chanties, and at the flexibility of their form. Yet the explanation is simple. The different duties on shipboard, such as weighing anchor, hoisting the mainsail, or “sweating up” a halyard, called for different rhythms. Thus developed a capstan chanty for weighing anchor, a long drag chanty for hoisting sail, and a short drag chanty for furling a topsail. Where a long series of steady pulls was required, the long drag chanty was called for, while the short drag chanty was used for a briefer series of shorter and quicker pulls.
In tracing the history of the chanty, it is interesting to note that the tune preceded the words. The reason is obvious. In performing the work at sea, the crew must use rhythm. Historical references of great antiquity tell us of sailors stamping around the deck in unison, or uttering cries and shouts as they hoisted away on the ropes.
Though chanties have always existed where sailing ships have been found in commerce on the sea, and though they will exist as long as sailing ships endure, the main period of the chanty covers little more than half a century. During this period, the growth and decline of the American chanty runs parallel with the growth and decline of the American sailing ship. At the end of the War of 1812 the American sailing vessel began its great career, rose to its pinnacle of fame, and then, at the advent of steam, both the clipper ship and the sailor’s chanty were consigned to comparative oblivion. The rivalry in 1840 between the steamers of the Cunard Line and the packet ships, the greater efficiency of the steamship, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869—these briefly chronicle the death of the ships of sail. The use of steam on sea as well as on land rendered obsolete many of the tasks hitherto performed by hand. Thus rhythmical song was no longer needed, and the chanty, along with the fast disappearing sailing ship, was driven to the far corners of the earth, to the guano and nitrate trade with South America, to the wool trade with Australia.
But though the modern period of the sailing ship was thus comparatively brief, it was none the less glorious and eloquent of true romance. The transatlantic mail and passenger service, the discovery of gold in California and Australia, the cotton trade between Liverpool and the Southern states, the voyages for fur and hides around Cape Horn and into the Pacific, the trade in tea with China after the treaty of Tientsin—these were the chief events which brought the sailing ship to its greatest glory, and raised the chanty to the same acme of importance.
As to the chanty itself, so important was the singing of chanties, and so closely allied were they with the work on shipboard, that every vessel had its leader of the singing, who was called a chantyman. He it was who composed the verses of the various songs, and sang the solo lines, while the crew joined lustily in the chorus. So highly was the chantyman regarded both by officers and crew, that he was not required to join with the others in the actual labor on shipboard, but was privileged to stand by and direct the singing.
Since each ship had but one chantyman, and since each chantyman did so much original composing, it is no wonder that we rarely find two identical versions of the same chanty. Interesting also, and of credit to seamen in general, is the fact that while many lines of these chanties are vulgar or lewd, the choruses are always clean.
However widely the words of the chanties may differ, the music possesses marked characteristics of its own. Most people who have heard real chanties sung by sailors have been impressed strongly by the plaintive, melancholy, wailing melody of the songs.
These chanties are expressive of the men who sang them, of seamen who were brave, capable, yet fully aware of their inferiority to the elements. These sagas of the sea reflect the sailor’s love for swift, well-built ships, for efficient captains; and they also reflect a conservative, Anglo- Saxon joy in the ocean itself. These chanties reveal the sailor in his natural blend of virtues and vices, to be sure, but they also possess a distinct historical value, containing as they do references to the discovery of gold in California and Australia, to famous shipping lines, to whaling, to the Civil War, and to numerous ports and harbors.
It is particularly unfortunate that these chanties were not collected and written down until comparatively recent times. Many of them have been lost; practically all of the sailors who first sang them have died; and today we have only a fragmentary collection of these songs, with their memories of the days when the American sailing ship ruled the sea.
Why does a man choose to earn his living by following the sea, by working day and night, under the sun, under the moon and stars, with the mighty strength of the waters beneath his wooden ship? He follows the sea because he hears and obeys the call of the sea, because he wishes to experience life and adventure in foreign lands and waters. He is then an adventurer. When we see him on his craft, at the helm, or climbing up the rigging, or smoking his pipe in the forecastle, what is he thinking or talking about?
From my study of the chanties, I have found that his main interests are of two kinds, the immediate and the remote. Among his immediate interests are his duties on shipboard, his pay, his food, his treatment by his superiors, the character of his captain, his ship, other ships and lines, the ocean, nature, and all that pertains to life at sea. Yet all this time, his geographically remote interests, those connected with the land, are always in his thoughts. He thinks and talks of love, of home, of heroic figures of the past and present, and of liquor. This cursory analysis of the sailor’s mind reveals a combination and intertwining of emotions aroused on the one hand by the sea, on the other by the land. On the ocean, the sailor pursues the vision of the shore, yet, once on land, the lure of the open sea haunts him until he dons his red-topped boots and his tarpaulin hat, and he finds himself afloat again.
Our first glimpse of the sailor at sea is given us in two chanties which describe the various phases of his life aboard ship. “Paddy Doyle,” a short drag song, contains these lines:
“We’ll tauten the bunt and we’ll furl,
We’ll bunt up the sail with a fling.”
“One More Day,” on the other hand, is a pumping chanty, used of course when the ship is leaking or when the water has swept down below decks through the hatches, and the men are stationed at the pumps:
“Only one more day a-reefing, a-sailing,
A-working, a-furling, a-hauling, a-growling.”
The composition of songs of this character, adapted to a particular kind of task aboard ship, is the natural result of the seaman’s interest in his work. “Paddy Doyle” was as inevitable on board ship in the last century as the alma mater song is today on the college campus.
One of the most interesting chanties which deals with financial matters is “The Dead Horse.” When sailors signed their papers for a voyage, they were given a month’s pay in advance. This money, almost invariably immediately spent, had to be later earned at sea. In other words, the sailor usually spent his first month at sea “working out the dead horse,” laboring for a month without pay to make up for the early expenditure of his money. R. B. Whall tells that on British ships it was the custom to run up to the main yard a rude canvas effigy of a horse, when the month’s work was over, and then for the crew to cut it away, while the sailors sang, with genuine emotion:
“I think I heard our old man say
That our dead horse is up to-day.
It’s up aloft the horse must go,
We’ll hoist him up, then bury him low,
We’ll hoist him to the main yardarm,
Then drop him to the depths of the sea.”
On American ships this same chanty was sung, but no “horse” was hoisted to the main yard. This chanty was used instead as a halyard or capstan chanty.
Next to the important matter of wages, the sailor was concerned with the quality of his food and the manner in which he was treated by his superiors. There is no chanty which sings the praises of officers who treat their crew well and see that they are supplied with palatable food. All of the chanties which deal with the relations of officers and crew stress the rough and often brutal treatment given to the sailors. For example, “Blow, Boys, Blow” tells of poor food and possible broken bones:
“And what do you think they got for their dinner?
’Twas water soup but slightly thinner.
And what do you think they got for their suppers?
Belaying pin soup and a roll in the scuppers.”
Again, in firm and sincere language, is sung the story of the authority of the mate:
“ ‘Lay aft,’ is the cry, ‘to the break of the poop,
Or I’ll help you along with the toe of my boot.’ ”
Another chanty reveals the sailor in a downhearted mood:
“I wish to God I’d never been born,
To go rambling round and round Cape Horn.”
There is one chanty, entirely devoted to the opinions of a thoroughly dissatisfied crew, which is reserved for special occasions when the voyage is over, when the men have been paid off, and when full vent may be safely given to pent-up feelings. This chanty is “Leave Her, Johnny,” a most forcible and convincing statement of the sailors’ opinion of officers and ship:
“The grub was bad and the wages low,
She shipped it green both day and night.
The mate is a devil and the old man’s worse,
And so we’ll wish that we never shall be,
On a hungry . . . just the like of she.
The rats have gone, and we the crew,
It’s time, by God, that we went too.”
On the other hand, the sailor treasured in his heart the ideal of a noble captain, for the most beautiful chanty of all, “Storm- along” shows the deep feeling of the seaman at the death of such a leader. With brevity and sincerity the seaman sings:
“Stormey’s dead and gone to rest,
Of all the skippers he was best.
They dug his grave with a silver spade,
His shroud of finest silk was made.
They lowered him with a golden chain,
Their eyes all dim with more than rain.”
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that this chanty is one of the very few in which death is mentioned. In the days of sailing ships, the perils of the sea were so imminent and so well understood that sailors looked upon death not as a distant and improbable event, but as something near at hand and liable to occur at any moment.
In addition to honoring a noble leader, the sailor held his ship in high esteem. This love for his ship was not an exuberant, exaggerated pride, but rather it was a restrained and conservative expression of satisfaction. The sailor’s ideal was a ship well built, fast, and reliable. Yet beyond these fundamentals he could appreciate her power, the beauty of her sails and spars, the grandeur of the combat between ship and wave. In “Blow, Boys, Blow”:
“A Yankee ship came down the river,
Her masts and spars they shine like silver.”
In “Shenandoah”:
“The ship sails free, a gale is blowing,
The braces taut, the sheets a-flowing.
When she rolls down her topsails shiver.”
Finally, in “The Black Ball Line”:
“The Black Ball ships they are good and true,
And they are the ships for me and you.
For once there was a Black Ball ship
That fourteen knots an hour could clip.”
For the sailor to feel a pride in his ship was but natural. Yet his interest in ships and shipping was by no means confined to his own vessel. The chanties contain many references to ships, shipping lines, and maritime characters of the day which are of real historical value.
For example, the most famous American packet company of the day was the Black Ball Line of New York, whose ships carried mail and passengers between New York and Liverpool. The speed of these Black Ball ships was phenomenal. In the years from 1816 to 1822 they averaged 23 days for the voyage eastward and 40 days for the voyage westward. The general average of all other shipping companies for the same period was 37 days eastward and 68 days westward. One chanty which has been mentioned, “The Black Ball Line,” immortalized the speed of the Black Bailers, and also presented a picture of the Yankee sailor in Liverpool, at a time when English sailors wore long hair:
“The Yankee sailors you’ll see there,
With red-top boots and short-cut hair.”
The Black Ball Line was noted for its iron discipline and for the occasional brutal treatment of the crew by the officers. On the other hand, the crew was often composed of unruly men, who had previous criminal records. The chanty “Blow the Man Down” tells of a sailor from the clipper Flying Fish, who was mistaken by a Liverpool policeman for a Black Bailer. The Flying Fish sailors considered themselves superior to those from a Black Bailer, and this rivalry and ill-feeling were made evident when the policeman arrested one of the crew of the Flying Fish:
“ ‘You’ve sailed in a packet that flies the Black Ball,
You’ve robbed some poor Dutchman of boots, clothes and all.’
‘0 policeman, policeman, you do me a great wrong;
I’m a Flying Fish sailor just home from Hong Kong.’
Says he: ‘You’re a Blackballer by the cut of your hair;
I know that you’re a Blackballer by the clothes that you wear.’
They gave him six months in Liverpool town,
For kicking a p’liceman and blowing [knocking] him down.”
This version may be approximately dated, because the Flying Fish was built by Donald McKay at East Boston, Massachusetts, in 1851, and foundered several years later in the China Sea.
There are many other references in various chanties to ships of the period, though scarcely as many as we might expect. Among those mentioned are: the famous clipper Dreadnought, which made a record passage from Sandy Hook to Queenstown in 1853; the clipper Henry Clay, one of the earlier three-decker clippers; the Confederate cruiser Alabama, launched in 1862; and the famed Sovereign of the Seas.
Next, turning attention to the waters beneath the ship and crew, it is distinctly surprising to find scarcely a reference to the ocean or to the beauty of nature upon the sea. Apparently these sailors regarded the winds, rains, and snows, and even the ocean itself as mere matters of course. The following lines from “Blow the Man Down” are apparently as near as the chantyman could come to an appreciation of the beauty of the sea:
“It’s now we are sailing on the ocean so wide,
Where the deep and blue waters dash by our side.”
Lastly, the chanties make no mention of mermaids, strange monsters of the deep, or any of the other subjects of nautical folklore. In “Blow the Man Down,” we find mention of the captain of a becalmed vessel inviting the fishes to come aboard and take command:
“The next was a whale, aye, the biggest of all,
He climbed up aloft and he let each sail fall.
The mackerel came next, with his pretty striped back,
He hauled aft each sheet and he boarded each tack.”
What, then, is the true picture of the American merchant sailor of the last century? His chanties have shown him to be conservative and sincere, he prefers to understate rather than overstate. He does not sing of his blessings, but he does sing, and loudly too, of his misfortunes and sufferings. When he is happy and contented, when he is at peace with his officers and surroundings, he keeps this satisfaction to himself. But when anyone attempts to abuse him, he awakens and composes a chanty “Leave Her, Johnny,” giving his aroused indignation full play.
He has also a certain amount of imagination. He voices his joy at ending a month of labor; he sings of a whale and a mackerel who take command of his ship; he is proud of the speed and seaworthiness of his vessel. He does not sing of the sun and moon, the winds and waves, but this can be readily understood. Nor does the sailor sing of religion, or of any marine Benedicite, calling upon the works of the Lord to praise him. The chanty of the life at sea has a soul of its own, plaintive, appealing, laconic, sincere. All honor to our brave and valiant ancestors who would climb out the length of a yard in a tossing, pitching sea, or who would hoist a mainsail as they braced their feet on an icy deck, and at the same time sing real, virile songs which appealed to them and which helped them in their work.
“Here’s health to the Dreadnought, and to all her brave crew.
Here's health to her Captain and officers, too,
Talk about your flash packets, Swallow Tail and Black Ball,
But the Dreadnought’s the clipper to beat one and all.”—From Neeser’s American Naval Songs and Ballads.