All For Me Grog, Me Jolly Jolly Grog

Here’s to you and yours this holiday season. May your shores be calm and your ships sturdy and strong. As the new year creeps up on us, I find myself looking for a Midwestern pub to celebrate and stomp out some old time sea shanties.
I want huge iron tankards of mead to slam down on worn mahogany bars. I want to chant out dusted maritime disaster songs and sing wild tales of nautical adventure men and their women whom they long to come home to.

I found this wonderful site that has a huge index of sea shanties, many of the songs have MIDI files to give you the basic melody of the song. A complimentary site is found here and offers a bit more historical background on the songs. There’s lyrics and MIDI files as well. Favorite song today is The Bonny Ship The Diamond – “O she was lost to the ice in 1819, a finer boat you never have seen”. Another one of my favorites is Whiskey Johnnie. Turns out my name is not just the generic term for toilets and folks who buy prostitutes but also the generic term for a merchant seaman. Thus many songs are composed about me. Could be that ‘Sea Shanties’ are the best genre of folk songs ever.

Make sure you’re singing the right shanty for the right occasion. From the index of Sea Shanties we learn the shanty types:

Short Drag Shanty
Short drag or short haul shanties were for tasks requiring quick pulls over a relatively short time, such as shortening or unfurling sails.

Long Drag Shanty
Long drag or halyard shanties were for heavier work requiring more setup time between pulls. For example, to get a heavy sail up to the mast, a shanty that gave the men a rest in between the hauls was what was required. The same shanty could also be used to lower the sails. This type of shanty usually has a chorus at the end of each line. These songs were used for long, heavy periods of labor.

Capstan Shanty
Capstan (or windlass) shanties were used for long repetitive tasks, that simply need a sustained rhythm. Raising or lowering the anchor while winding up the heavy anchor chain was their prime use. This winding was done by pushing round and round at the capstan bars, which required a long and continuous effort. These are the most devloped of the work shanties.

Forecastle Shanties
In the evening, when the work was done, it was time to relax. Singing was a favored method of relaxation. The songs sung could come from places visited, either at home or in some foreign land. Naturally, songs of love, adventure, pathos, and famous men, battles, or just plain funny songs topped the list.

Whaling Shanties
Life on a whaler was worse than any other type of vessel, except maybe that of a pirate ship (in the sense of surviving). Voyages typically lasted from two to three years, and you also had the ever-present stench of whale oil. Chasing a whale could lead to the ship being smashed by the whale’s tail. Many sailors were maimed or killed by the tail.


So for this New Years Eve, with the work of the year behind us let’s raise our glasses and sing a few Forecastle Shanties and sing ourselves into relaxation.

Also, books about sea shanties and recordings of sea shanties.