I just tried to post a long note that has disappeared into space.

The bottom line is that without extensive recordings of real shanties being sung by real sailing-ship crews in the nineteenth century, we can't know precisely what they sounded like. Surely they weren't as entertaining as we would like.

My skeptical, pessimistic view is that the average shantyman repeated himself often and adlibbed rather crudely. No witness ever wrote that the words of the shanties were very interesting.

Hatfield's tiny collection is especially valuable for being both relatively early and entirely unpretentious. The lyrics he gives are, well, mostly pretty dull. Much the same can be said for Bullen. Remember too that Hugill emphasized that "stringing out" was a very common way of making a song last through a long job. Carpenter's singers "string out" frequently.