Excellent info, Lighter -- and timely! I am about the dissect/log LA Smith; it is the last (for now!) textual source of the 1880s that I have.

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L.A. Smith, _Music of the Waters_ (London, 1888).

The editor of _The Shipping World_ had commissioned her to write a series of articles on shanties. Do we know these articles?

Introduction dated June 1887. I believe that is too late to have had access to Davis and Tozer's collection FWIW.

She learned some schanties directly from sailors. The introductory notes make much of this, though we know that so many of her items were just culled from other texts.

I see some plagiarism so far from the unsigned 1869 Chambers's Journal article, so we know for sure that she read that (or wrote it?!).

The chapter of interest is the first,

//
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN "CHANTIES;" OR, WORKING SONGS OF THE SEA.
//

I begin at a passage saying how chanties were not part of navy life:

//
On vessels of war, the drum, fife, or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary movement regulator. There is a vast difference between the merchant sailor and his fellow "salt," the man-o'-war's man, whom they call "Johnny Haultaut," or "John o' Fight." They hold each other in mutual derision, although without any unfriendly feeling. Accustomed to the comparative independence and free life of a merchant-vessel, they look with scorn on the binding discipline and severe penalties of a man-o'-war, and laugh contemptuously as they watch the crew in uniform dress walk round the windlass, and weigh anchor like mechanical dummies:—
    "Your work is very hard, my boys,
    Upon the ocean sea,
   And for your reefing topsails,
       I'd rather you as me—
I feather my oar unto the shore,
So happy as I be in the Guard-ship, ho!"

No hearty chanties there—no fine chorus ringing with feeling and sentiment, brought out with the sort of despairing wildness, which so often strikes neighbouring landsfolk with the deepest emotion. He likes to growl —and he may, so long as he goes about his work. I have heard mates say, "Give me a man that can growl : the more he growls, the more he works." Silence reigns supreme aboard a Queen's ship; no general order is given by word of mouth, the boatswain's whistle takes its place. There, where the strength of one or two hundred men can be applied at one and the same effort, the labour is not intermittent, but continuous. The men form on either side of the rope to be hauled, and walk away with it like firemen marching with their engine, when the headmost pair bring up at the stern or bow, they part, and the two streams flow back to the starting-point outside the following files. Thus in this perpetual "follow my leader way" the work is done, with more precision and steadiness than in the merchant service. In it the heavier work is done by each man doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the "Chanty," and here is the true singing of the deep sea—it is not recreation, it is an essential part of the work. It will masthead the topsail-yards, on making sail; it will start the anchor, ride down the main-tack with a will, it will break out and take on board cargo, and keep the pumps going. A good voice and a stirring chorus are worth an extra man.
//

A similarly worded passage occurred in Symondson's 1876 TWO YEARS ABAFT THE MAST

cont...