Mr Red,

I took it we were offering recommendations to the OP, with an explanation of why we were recommending. Which is what I did.

I agree that Doerflinger's book is an excellent resource. It has different pros and cons than Bullen's book, and as you had already recommended Doerflinger, I chose to say something about Bullen.

Each offers different *types* of perspective. Consider that Bullen was the sort of person that Doerflinger would have *interviewed* to create his book. Doerflinger's work, therefore, gives us his attempt. as mediator, to assess and collate what he selected to be of relevance from among chantymen he talked to. --Whereas Bullen is one of those very chantymen, doing the selecting of what to include and what to say *himself*. The latter is quite unique amongst all the people who have ever ventured to put together a "collection" of chanties (and I explained why Hugill, for example, was not such a person though he is popularly understood to be).

Re: Your comments about giving one sample verse to each song, I quote myself:
"Bullen, as a chantyman in practice during the heyday, understood the truly improvisational nature of chanties which appears yet to be inscrutable to Folk Revival performers coming from a particular perspective on what tradition entails."