Why Is It Called a Sea ‘Shanty’?

When it comes to popular music, we’re used to hip-hop, indie rock, and even K-pop topping the charts. 

But we really didn’t expect the newest trend to be a genre that was out of fashion 150 years ago. 

Yes, the hot tunes of the moment are … sea shanties.

What is a sea shanty?

Sea shanties are songs that sailors sung while they worked. Sailors sang shanties as they worked pumps up and down, removing water from the hold of the ship. They sang shanties as they heaved on the heavy ropes that dragged a new sail into place. They sang shanties as they sanded the decks in the earliest hours of the morning, or turned the capstan that pulled the heavy iron anchor up from the ocean floor.

Whatever the task, it was hard, and it was done by hand. And it often had to be done rhythmically. It wouldn’t do if half the men sheeting a sail into place pulled on a rope, while the other half relaxed. Everyone had to pull together; reset their hands higher on the rope; and then pull again.

Singing a shanty was an effective way to keep men working in synch. To keep everyone in time, the singing was led by a “shantyman.” He would sing a brief verse, and the sailors would follow with a chorus, often giving their greatest push or pull on the chorus’s ending word. Here’s an example that makes fun of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom British sailors called “Old Boney.” (2)

Shantyman: Boney was a warrior,
Crew: Way, hey, ya!
Shantyman: A warrior and a terrier,
Crew: Jean-François.

Sometimes, the shantyman would improvise his verses, and according to “The Shanty Book: Part I,” “once the improvisation began, things became so intimate and personal as to be unprintable.” (1) For men stuck at sea for months on end, deprived of female company, you can only imagine just how unprintable the lyrics became.

Lewd or not, these songs kept the men entertained through hours of painful labor, relieved their boredom, and kept them pushing or pulling in time.

Sea Shanties + TikTok = ShantyTok

So why are we singing sea shanties today? Blame it on TikTok, the social platform that lets users share short videos, often of themselves singing or dancing.

It seems that one user, a Scottish postman named Nathan Evans, posted a video of himself singing “The Wellerman,” a traditional sea shanty. There’s nothing fancy about the video. It’s Evans, shot in black and white, sitting in a chair, singing. Yet the mysterious force that causes some videos to go viral came over this one.

... Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips