Yup. No apology needed. Fantasy & fiction sell better than nonfiction. Homer's Odyssey was always more popular than Polybius' Histories, still is. That's how you get chanties or Jamaican folk music in the firstest place:

Keleusma - Day Oh! (end of night shift.)
Antikeleusma - Dah daylight come an me wan go home.

Standard antiphon. It's an aire, jodie or half-step cadence. The proceleusmatic subgenre is chorus helciariorum. The loaders' head cotta serves the function of the helcium or “yoke.” And naval science is boring af. Physics is worse. Greco-Roman lit is a root canal without the shots.

Any point on the Bennett-Travellers-Belafonte evolution to pop song is far and away more accessible, interesting and entertaining than the working class maritime original. Minstrel coonjine songs same-same.

Regarding chanties, they are today 100% heritage related entertainment...

If a chanty were collected or composed ...totally away from the original context... can it be maritime work song? Methinks our only real disagreement is in what century the first “today” was, 20th, 19th, -4th?