- 1) Paddy West
- Growing up near the docks in the East End of London, I was fascinated by the endless activity. Stevedores and dockers loaded and unloaded the great ships from distant lands, into wharves, barges, trains, trucks and small cargo vessels. Smells of timber, rubber, wine, spices and a host of unknown aromas filled the air.
Through this cacophony of sounds the crew of an outward-bounder would make their way aboard their ship. Most would had been to sea before, but others would be dragged aboard senseless having spent their
pay on rotgut booze or having been drugged by some unscrupulous boarding house master, and those would awake at sea wondering what had happened. However, some might have spent a brief time in the company of Paddy West and his wife of Great Howard Street in Liverpool and there they would have got the very basic rudiments of seafaring. Paddy West was used as both a forebitter and a capstan shanty.
- 2) The sailor's alphabet
- Until sailing time a crew would be fully occupied preparing the ship for sea. There were endless jobs to do and things to learn. All gear had to be checked and understood, a seaman had to know where to find a line, a tack, a sheet, a halyard or piece of equipment at any time, daylight or darkest night, on deck or aloft, in calm or in rolling seas. There are many versions of a sailor's alpha-bet. Bob Roberts wrote one adaptation called the bargeman's alphabet. Such songs and shanties were a good way for a newcomer to learn their way around the gear on a ship or, as in the case of Bob and me, around his sailing barge. The sailor's alphabet was usually sung as a forebitter, an off-duty song, though they were very handy at the old jiggy-jig pump.
- 3) Boston Harbour
- Whether it refers to Boston in America or Boston in Lincolshire, England, Boston Harbour is a great piece that'd work well for sweating up a main-course.
- 4) Old Moke picking on a banjo
- The old make picking on a banjo probably originates from Negro and Irish navvies working in the railways gangs in America. How it got to sea is anyone's guess. This version is for the capstans either raising the anchor or warping a ship out through the docks to the open sea.
- 5) Cheer'ly men
- Cheer'ly men was one of only two shanties allowed to be sung aboard Royal Naval vessels where it was used for 'catting' the anchor, that is, heaving the anchor up to the 'catheads' after it has been weighed (pulled up) in preparation for securing on the anchor bed (while at sea) or before letting it go. Richard Henry Dana mentions this shanty in Two years before the mast (1840) based on the ''og' that he kept while aboard the brig Pilgrim on a voyage round Cape Horn between 1834 and 1836. It was used for 'catting' the anchor, the order being "Cat'and Fish the anchor", "let's have Cheer'ly men".
- 6) The wild goose shanty
- I worked for a little while as a volunteer helping with the restoration of the barque Polly Woodside in Melbourne, and there I met a lovely old fellow, Mr Daniels, who had shipped in the Polly as a young lad. When I asked him about songs he said that they certainly sang when working the vessel and he called them 'ship shanties'. When 1 sang him the Wild Goose Shanty, he smiled and said "When I first saw the Polly she was naked but when we dressed her and got her to sea, she was like a beautiful woman." The wild goose shanty is an example of the flexibility of these shanties. Stan Hugill says it was sung at the windlass and capstans, but notes that Doerflinger has it as a halyard or pump shanty. Whatever the case, it is grand to sing especially when led with such enthusiasm by Duncan Brown.
- 7) The Yangtze River shanty
- The Yangtze River runs into the Pacific Ocean at Shanghai. Shanghai is both the name of the great Chinese port, and a verb, meaning to be placed aboard a sip against one's will by force, a practice common in the days of sailing ships of the 18th and 19th centuries. Shanghai was about as far away as you could get from the major ports of America and Britain in those days and was not a place that sailors relished visiting. Essentially it was too far away. But sailors, like the shanties, had to be flexible too so a consolation was the idea of a girl in every port. How much they may have learned from those cultures and the women.....
This shanty started life in a folk opera by Hamish McLaren and called Sailor with banjo. McLaren had attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth at the age of twelve and after graduating serves as a gunnery officer. After a posting to a naval station in Shanghai for a while he left the navy to follow his star as a writer. McLaren's words were adapted and set to a mix of the tops'I shanty tunes Tom's gone to Hilo and the Congo River by Charlie Ipear of Maine. Having used shanties, it would also work well on the pumps or loading I'd reckon. So open yer lungs bend yer back to the Yangtze River Shanty.
- 8) Piqué la baleine
- When I went to Brittany in 2002 1 heard wonderful shanties and songs from the canals, the rivers, the coast and the sea. The Breton maritime festivals had sung English and American shanties for years and wondered why -"If we are a maritime nation, which we are, where are our shanties?" Now we all benefit from hearing the immense repertoire researched, collected and published by Le Chasse Maree/ArMen
So while we are in the Southern Pacific we,might as well join a .French whaling crew as they chase sperm whales using the "chants a ramer"( rowing songs) Piquela bakim and Hourra les filles, then we will he!p strip the blanket piece from a whale using a "chants a hisser" (hauling song probably a halyard shanty). Then raising a shanty like Le capitaine de San Malo, the men would start hauling on the halyard or barring over the windlass, then the whale would be rolled so the blubber peeled off like an orange. This blanket piece might be fifteen feet long and three feet wide and weigh in at 2,000 pounds.
- 9) Hourra les filles
- 10) Le capitaine de San-Malo
- 11) Bully in the Alley
- Bully in the Alley started life as a Negro song. Halyard shanty can also be used at the pumps because it's one of those that has innumerable verses
- 12) Bold Reilly gone away
- Bold Reilly gone away, I got from a Danish seaman who worked on the salvage tugs out of the port of Korsor. He said it came from the ships of the East India Company; formed in 1600 it had the monopoly on trade with the East Indies and had many large, armed merchantmen, While these ships were at sea the wives had the right to draw half of the seaman's pay for sustenance. So 'white stocking day' was when they dressed up and headed to the shipping office to collect. If the truth is known they might then go on a spree with their fancy man.
- 13) Roll the old chariot along
- Rail the old chariot along may well have started life as a Negro gospel song, though Stan Hugill cites Doerflinger as saying it is based on a Salvation Army revivalist hymn. Whatever its origin, it would have been used to brace the yards. The last two verses here Bob and I added. Charlie Brown's was a blood house outside of the West India Docks where you could get everything from a drink to a delicate condition which would be hard to explain away.
- 14) John Kanaka
- In Dana's book Two years before the mast, he makes a mention of work- songs sung by kanakas loading cargoes along the Californian coast. Stan Hugill tells us he learned the song John Kanaka from a " wonderful West Indian shantyman, Harding of Barbado". In Australia 'kanaka' was the term given to islanders who were stolen away into Australia to work as slaves in the cane fields.
- 15) John Cherokee
- John Cherokee reminds us of the days when, after the harvest, slave owners would hire their 'property' out to sailing or whaling ship captains. The attitude was 'why feed 'em when they are not producing and you could earn money hiring them out'. This may well have been how many Negro songs went to sea. Joanna Colcord, the daughter of a ship's master, put together a great book called Songs of the American sailormen, (Oak Pubs 1964). She got John Cherokee from a Captain Robinson, "1 heard it during the Civil War at Nassau, while the crew were loading cotton on the ship Hilja." I assume they were cramming cotton into the holds using the big jackscrews
- 16) One more day
- One more day - the boys can smell the land at the end of the journey, so this shanty would have been sung with enthusiasm and could have been used, like many other shanties, for a variety of jobs from pumps to capstans, halyards to sweating up, but whatever the situation you can bet it was sung with vigour.
- 17) Whip Jamboree
- Stan Hugill gives the shanty Whip Jamboree as a homeward-bounder sung at the windlass or capstan. From my point of view the crew are warping the ship up the dock and into the berth, checking out the dockside talent and waiting foe the moment the can stat enjoying some shore time. And good luck to 'em.
- 18) Leave her Johnnies
- But the work is not over until the last 'sucko'. Leave her johnnies was usually the last shanty sung on a journey. With the ship is safely berthed, her sails harbour-furled and gear cleared away, there is one last job to do and that is to pump her dry. That job is only over when that sucking sound is heard and an officer gives the order "That'll do men." Our trip is over, safe ashore and fair winds.
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