Marc,

That was clear to me. It doesn't give me any more or less faith in Hugill's theories, however! :0 We simply have more information now, when it comes to history, than Hugill had at the time. And we have had more eyes, with different perspectives, looking at that information. I LOVE Hugill's work, but when I'm searching for historical understanding, it is among the last sources I turn to.
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I happen to believe that that Hugill wrote the Bible of shanty singers - but just like its better known namesake it is full of inaccuracies and downright lies.

I can agree with this 100%! :D

Since Santy Anna is in the refrain, it was easy for him to "win the day,"...

I have thought the same. This is what I would call something like "internal logic" (though that might be an inaccurate way of saying it). I think there is a lot of internal logic to chanties that people overlook in favor of "external" logic.

External logic (again, just my term) drives the method of picking on certain words in shanties and looking for their etymology, looking for historical events to attach them to, etc. It's what folklorists often seem to have done, and it is the method of a lot of "origins" threads on Mudcat. It is also the method often used by Hugill in his writing. A song is presented, which contains some notable or unfamiliar word/name in that particular version, and then the presenter goes along trying to explain the word and find a story to why it appears in the song. In fact, Hugill's whole SfSS is constructed out of clusters of shanties linked, often haphazardly, by some shared word.

I will not at all say that this method is useless; it is often very insightful. But the narratives of the songs are often non-existent or much less coherent than presenters to modern audiences would (understandably) have us believe. My feeling is that the audience/readers are expected to want these narratives because it is a way they connect with and feel like they can understand the song. It needs to make literal sense, or that which doesn't needs to be explained.

I don't believe, however, that that literal sense was necessarily present in chanties, since rhythm, sound, sing-ability, and non-literal meaning were so important.