One obvious observation from Gibb's last February list of references must surely be, whilst in my mind the derivation of chanty is simple and obvious, by the time these comments were being expressed the English word 'chant' with the hard 'ch' is seen as quite separate from 'chanty' pronounced 'sh'. Those who are using the word 'chant' were describing in their minds something with barely a tune but repeated phrases, comparable with perhaps a 'Gregorian chant' and when recognising an actual regular tune being used the description was 'song' or 'chanty'. At least worth some discussion for those unsure.

If nothing else we can perhaps agree that 'shanty' is simply a phonetic spelling of 'chanty'/'chantey' or am I wrong?