This reference nicely fits the sort of thing I was looking for: the sense of a foundation for interest in performing or hearing, chanties, in the 1910s, that could support the developing recording industry and eventually lead to commercial recordings of shanties...and ultimately, revival.

Making reference to the activities of SH King promoting chanties in the American Merchant Marine, the writer supposes that soon they will be recorded and enjoyed by landlubbing audiences. (Cross-posted in another thread.)

1918        Unknown. "Carrying the Sea Atmosphere Inland." _Shipping_ 5(7) (16 November 1918): 13-5.

Folks back home at Bangor, Maine, or Mesa, Arizona, who have boys in the Merchant Marine, may soon hear real sea songs, as they now look on scenes aboard ship, without leaving their own neighborhood —sailors' "chanteys" are being preserved on phonograph records for home use—life on square-riggers, cargo steamers and merchant marine training ships, has become material for the "Movies"—altogether an interesting phase of a "back to the sea" movement of national proportions.

…In this educational effort for it is such, purely, undertaken from various angles by various people, but under authority of the United States Shipping Board, official sponsor for the merchant marine --some novel effects are being worked out. For example, in due time it may be expected that sailors' songs and sailors' "chanteys"--as sung in forecastles and at tasks on deck when Jack the merchant mariner was a personage afloat and ashore, as he is getting to be again --will be reproduced in the records of the family phonograph.

"Chanteys" for the Music Machine.

Chantey singing is being revived in the merchant marine, at least on the training ships which are preparing Young America, at the rate of 4,000 lads a month, for service on our vast new commerce fleets, and under the new order of things it will be possible for Bangor, Maine, and Mesa, Arizona to hear in the same hour the actual notes and phrases of such famous chanteys as "Shenandoah," "Bound for the Rio Grande" and "Blow the Man Down," for the record may have them hard and fast before spring flowers bloom again. …