Okay. I've read all the shanty threads and it is my considered opinion you lot have no more clue about the history of nautical work songs than the history of the modern calypso.

Your first hint should have been the first and last lines in Moby Dick.

Had you been born Catholic sailors you would still be singing the κελεύειυ, celeusma, celeuma, saloma ad nauseum just like you had been doing for the previous twenty five (25) centuries or one hundred (100) generations... give or take.

But you are not Catholic sailors. You sing White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) nautical work songs, whether indigenous, adopted or appropriated; and you started labeling your music "shanties" c.1850AD.

But that's all it is, your popular culture's name, your tag, your label to match your consumer & supplier. Any claims to naval science or architecture are false and should be rebuked as same. Art is not science.

And while we're about it, sea shanties are no more informed by chattel slave culture than any other Euro-American popular form; nor any less for that matter. Twenty five (25) centuries is also one hundred (100) generations of slavery… give or take.