The Shanty Book

Lyrics and Music

Sea Shanties

By Richard Runciman Terry

A sea shanty, chantey, or chanty is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labor on board large merchant sailing vessels. 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.

IT is sometimes difficult for old sailors like myself to realize that these fine shanty tunes--so fascinating to the musician, and which no sailor can hear without emotion--died out with the sailing vessel, and now belong to a chapter of maritime history that is definitely closed. They will never more be heard on the face of the waters, but it is well that they should be preserved with reverent care, as befits a legacy from the generation of seamen that came to an end with the stately vessels they manned with such skill and resource.

In speech, the old-time 'shellback' was notoriously reticent--almost inarticulate; but in song he found self-expression, and all the romance and poetry of the sea are breathed into his shanties, where simple childlike sentimentality alternates with the Rabelaisian humour of the grown man. Whatever landsmen may think about shanty words--with their cheerful inconsequence, or light-hearted coarseness--there can be no two opinions about the tunes, which, as folk-music, are a national asset.