And what of the shanties that we know were used on board of the whalers?    There were a few which have some documentation. First of all there is the shanty "Hieland Laddie". Hugill says that it "is based on an old Scottish march and dance tune and was very popular both as a walkaway and a capstan song in the old Dundee whalers and according to Davis & Tozer it was also used at halyards, withoout the final grand chorus." (p. 143/'61) Hugill's (a) version has heavy Scottish overtones and is all about whaling. He says that he learned it from Bosun Chenoworth, who had "sailed for years in the hard-bitten whaling ships of Dundee." (p. 144) Here is a Mudcat thread on this shanty:

thread.cfm?threadid=54643#2814365

And here is a link back to my previous discussion of this shanty above:

thread.cfm?threadid=126347&messages=188#2826380

We have already discussed the two shanties given by Olmstead in his book INCIDENTS OF A WHALING VOYAGE, which are a version of "Drunken Sailor" and a version of "Haul Her Away", or perhaps "Cheerily Men". Olmstead also mentions another shanty used for pulling the whale's teethto the tune of "O! hurrah my hearties O!":

http://books.google.com/books?id=oJUFAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA182&dq=%22O!+hurrah+my+hearties,+O!%22&lr=&cd=2#v=onepage&q=%22O!%20hurrah%20

Colcord, in her book SONGS OF THE AMERICAN SAILORMEN, mentions that the whalemen had their own verse for the shanty "Goodbye, Fare You Well!", which went:

        "The *whales* we are leaving, we leave with regret!" (p. 110)

She also gives us another piece of important documentation. In her introduction to the shanty "Santy Anna", she says,

        "The last whaler to return to New Bedford hauled into dock to the tune of this old shanty; and it was told me by one who was present tht the grim old seafarers who gathered on the pierhead to watch, shed tears unashamed as the well-remembered notes rang out across the harbor for the last time." (p. 80)

So, I think we can add these two shanties to our list: "Goodbye, Fare You Well!" and "Santy Anna".

In his introductory note to Frank T. Bullen's SONGS OF SEA LABOR (1914), none other than Arthur Conan Doyle makes the following interesting comment:

        "You have done real good national work in helping to preserve these fine old Chanties. Like yourself I have heard them many a time when I have been bending to the rhythm as we hauled up the heavy whaling boats to their davits."

Was Doyle referring to personal experience of being at sea on board a whaler? Or were "whaling boats" something found on other kinds of ships?

There is one other source that I have looked at and I'm not quite sure how to fit it into this discussion. That is the essay by Roger Abrahams in his book DEEP THE WATER, SHALLOW THE SHORE (1974), entitled "Solid Fas" Our Captain Cry Out: Blackfishing at Barouallie". In this essay Abrahams gives about twenty-five shanties used by the Barouallie whalers. Some of them are recognizable as being descendants of more commonly know traditional shanties, such as "All Through the Rain and Squally Weather"/ "Blow Boys Blow", "Oh, My Rolling River ("Solid Fas")/ "Shenandoah", "Those Girls from Bermuda"/ "Goodbye, Fare You Well", "Royo Groun'"/ "Rio Grande", "Little Boy Lonzo"/ "Ranzo", "Johnny Come Down to Hilo", "Blow the Man Down", "We Are Bound DownSouth Alibama" / "South Australia", "Rosebank Whores"/ "Sally Brown", and "Time for Man Go Home"/ "Time for Us to Leave Her".

These songs are obviously "whaling songs" and pretty obviously shanties. And they come from a region with strong historical ties to whaling. And they are very recently recorded. They would add substantially to the list of "whaling shanties", although they are not recently used on the deep water ships. Are they the living remnant of a tradition of old whaling shanties?