It being Saturday, I thought I would share with fellow shanty enthusiasts a little more of John Masefield's words on this.

It is perhaps impossible, for anyone who has not had the privilege of hearing them sung under the condition for which they were made, to realise how much they helped the work. It used to be said that " a song was ten men on the rope." This was not an exageration. Every sailor must have seen men failing to do a piece of work without a song, yet doing it with pleasure and ease with the song to help them. Part of the value of the songs, no doubt, was in the timing of the haul, but the great results achieved by them came from the excitement and zest which the singing gave to the task. It often seemed as though new life entered the singers as they sang. Perhaps nobody ever heard one of these songs being sung at the rope or capstan without feeling that song was indeed a divine thing and the gift of gods to men.

Haul away me Rosie,
Keith.