A few weeks ago, my Twitter DMs exploded.
It was not for the reasons I feared, but because everyone who knows me needed to alert me all at once to the fact that a TikTok phenomenon of people singing “The Wellerman” had exploded on social media, leading to a surge of interest in sea chanties. Which was amazing, even with the blowing-up of my inbox.
(poor Lucy Bellwood had it far, far worse)
In spirit of having been “the shantyman” on both ship and shore, I share with you this short essay on the nature of sea chanties. I wrote it in response to a question on the National Novel Writing Month forums about writing airship chanties, and I hope you enjoy:
So, you have to remember there’s two kinds of chanties: work chanties and foc’s’le songs. Work chanties are the ones you sing as a slight improvement on “okay, one, two, LIFT!” The important thing with work chanties is what rhythm you need to get the job done, whether it’s one-TWO or one-two-three-FOUR!
Examples of the first: “WHEN i WAS a LITtle LAD, or SO me MOther TO-old ME! [beat] WAY haul a-WAY we’ll HAUL a-WAY JOE” and “in SOUTH ausTRAYya I was BORN! HEAVE a-WAY! HAUL a-WAY! in SOUTH ausTRAYya ROUND cape HORN…”
Examples of the second: “NOW we are READy to WHACK for the HORN! WAY, HEY, ROLL and GO! our BOOTS and our CLOTHES are all in the PAWN, sing ROLlickin RANdy DANdy OH!” and “The SMARTest packet you could FIND! HEY! HO! are you most DONE? The FAIR RosaLIN of the BLUE star LINE! clear away the TRACK and let the bullgine RUN!”
It gets everyone heaving on heave and not on ho, makes the lines fly free and easy. And it’s, this is important, sung by people for whom English is a second language, even if they come from England. So the words are always gonna be straightforward (if sometimes poetic) and the themes direct: Fuck The Man, Work Is Hard, I Miss Her, Fuck Our Enemies, It Was THIS BIG, pop history, Go Us!, litanies of ports and destinations, long and surprisingly intricate descriptions of the idylls and women awaiting us at home*.
The other kind are the foc’s’le tunes, the tunes you sing when your watch is done and you lay below. These are the songs you sing over your pipe tobacco, as you yarned out some old rope to make baggywinkles. They’re longer, more intricate, more like ballads. They’re histories like “Captain Kidd” and paeans to the girl you left behind like “Challo Brown” or even sailors’ theology like “Fiddler’s Green”.
The chanties I’ve found most adaptable is “Donkey Riding”.
“Donkey Riding” is a one-two work chanty, has a very simple structure about places you’ve been, and can be extended endlessly:
Was you ever out in Quebec/
Launching timbers on the deck/
They’ll be breakin’ your back/
and beatin’ your neck/
Riding on a donkey.
So it’s A-A-B-A with a one-two-one-two rhythm, which is a fancy way of saying you come up with a new verse like this:
“You ever see Indirabad?
Biggest damn feast you ever had
Rice and steak and bread and
baksheesh to make you glad
Now riding on a donkey…”
It also works as a handy bit of worldbuilding and/or exposition, both enumerating the important places in your setting and their reputations.
Other ready-to-hand chanties are “Spanish Ladies” (good for navigating directions, also for sounding badass), “South Australia” (describing a place and one’s adventures there in detail), “Get Up, Jack! John, Sit Down” (describing the life and times of a sailor), and “Bonnie Ship the Diamond” (describing a famous tragedy). I hope this gives you something to go on. I ask that, if you include them, be true to “Jericho,” “Mingulay Boat Song,” and “The Parting Glass,” for they were sacred to the sailors of the Lady Washington when I served and I hold them sacred, too.
*Sailors’ culture was horribly sexist and racist. The occasional exceptions exist to prove the rule. As Conrad noted, sailors held pretty much all continents in contempt past more than about five miles from shore, and there was a surprising egalitarianism…but just because there was a black man and a Frenchman hauling line, that wasn’t going to stop the watch from singing “Fathom the Bowl” and “Boney was a Warrior” about how inferior they were. I admire the sailors of old for many reasons, but I’m also well aware of their flaws and their horrors.
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