The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159399 Message #3777029
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
06-Mar-16 - 05:33 PM
Thread Name: Origins: What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor
Subject: RE: Origins: Drunken Sailor-Dickens question for Gibb
Thanks again, Steve.
The time of late 1830s to early 1840s was transitional. (Well, all times are transitional! By I view this as transitional with respect to this topic.)
The Olmsted reference (Snuffy's) is well known and important in the literature on chanty history. (Hugill had mentioned it, etc.)
In that incident, it was the whaleship NORTH AMERICA which had set out on her voyage in October of 1839. No reason to be surprised "Drunken Sailor" was still sung. The transition to new ways was complete about middle of the 1840s. The gradual, new use of the patent windlass, rather than a capstan or the old handspike windlass, was probably important—one of my main points in the above-linked paper.