Steve Gardham

18 verses for anchor heave is not much, to be honest, I talk with some experienced people, about the matter of heaving anchor. So Jim Mageean, Marek Szurawski, and Simon Spalding, and the conclusion were, the standard heave on a merchant ship was between 30 minutes up to one hour. This conclusion is kind of confirmed by Stan Hugill in his book, on page 94 first edition of "Shanties From the Seven Seas", in the description of the: "Opsang For Brasiliefareren, Bryggen Preciosa" capstan shanty, which have 54 verses, and I been proud to sing this shanty in full. Stan Hugill says: "In Opsang can be found the other forty-three verses he wrote - quite enough to finish a long heave!".
To sang this shanty, it took me around 33 minutes. But I'm not sure if the tempo wasn't too fast.
And in yesterday's conversation with Simon Spalding, reveal another not discussed never fact about the tempo of the shanties, especially anchor-capstan ones. Namely, I'm talking about, the people in nowadays try to do presentations on traditional sailing ships, but I think they do not take as a factor much much smaller crews, also much much bigger ships. Just imagine the difference to heave anchor on Joseph Conrad (Mystic Seaport Museum) with 20 people of the crew, and compare it to heave on Sedov or Krusenstern, with not sure much probably fewer people. In this case, the tempo drops drastically, also we have to add for example fact that half of the crew was "Shanghaied", others have a hangover from last night's Sailor Town parties.

What he really needs help with is whether anyone in our forum knows is that exists some books contain information such as the number of crew, officers, and so on, in certain merchant ships. I dug only one value from a book about german ships, and was informed about the crew on Flying P-Liner "Preussen" has 17-23 crew members.

About evidence of the Foster materials, well, I do not know more about him than Stan Hugill gives to us.