What I mean to say is that stevedores' chanties were more than sailors'. But their cultural context did not form a sort of "framed" picture that would lead people to consider them as a particular "thing" that formed a topic of discussion.

The pattern was to frame "sailors' songs" and then divide that into work and non-work songs, rather than to frame a category of worksongs that straddled the occupations of sailor and stevedore.

In many ways, the lives and identities of sailors and stevedores must have seemed irreconcilable. They did not both fit into the same "file." Yet their songs probably do.