shanty, also spelled Chantey, or Chanty (from French chanter, “to sing”), English-language sailors’ work song dating from the days of sailing ships, when manipulating heavy sails, by means of ropes, from positions on the deck constituted a large part of a sailor’s work. The leader, or shantyman, chosen for his seamanship rather than his musical talent, stood at the leading position on the rope, while the sailors crouched along the rope behind him. The shantyman would intone a line of a song and the group respond in chorus, heaving on the rope at a given point in the melody. The shantyman was one of the crucial members of the ship’s crew, and it was said that “a good shantyman was worth four extra hands on the rope.” He selected a song of appropriate type and speed for the task, and, by improvising verses, he could spin the song out for as long as needed; shanty texts are thus far more fluid than published versions indicate.
Shanty texts reflect the realities of the sailors’ lives, from bad food to captains’ virtues and flaws and stories of easy women. The tunes were drawn from ballads and other familiar melodies.
There were three principal types of shanties: short-haul, or short-drag, shanties, which were simple songs sung when only a few pulls were needed; halyard shanties, for jobs such as hoisting sail, in which a pull-and-relax rhythm was required (e.g., “Blow the Man Down”); and windlass, or capstan, shanties, which synchronized footsteps in jobs such as hoisting anchor (e.g., “Shenandoah,” “Rio Grande,” “A-Roving”).
Most of the shanties before the 19th century are of British origin; most of those from the 19th are American. Shanty singing declined in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when steam-powered ships replaced sailing vessels.