Uh, folks, some clarifications from memory: Sea Shanties is Shanties and Sailor's Songs with some of the chapters omitted, not an independent book. I can't tell you which chapters because I don't know where my copy of Sea Shanties is (I think I gave it away because I have the parent volume), but Shanties and Sailor's Songs has the best description of how shanties were used (better than the original Shanties From The Seven Seas) as well as a history of shanties which reflects some evolution in thinking from Shanties From The Seven Seas and a rather nice discussion of recordings and books up to the time of publication. It was a couple of those long initial chapters which were omitted--the songs are all there.

Stan also had a third book (I don't count the Sea Shanties abridgement) of sea music titled Songs of the Sea which is also worth having, particularly for the discography and the nice illustrations (production values took a big jump on this one). Thematically, the big difference is that the second book adds non-working sailor songs to the working shanties and the third book includes shore songs of the sea. In terms of content, the first book attempts to be complete and encyclopedic and therefore is invaluable to the enthusiast but probably not the best first book. (Which of the hundreds should you learn? Which versions of the melody? Which versions of the lyrics? Which verses selected from that version?) The other books try to present single versions suitable for performances--Shanties and Sailor's Songs in particular would be suitable for building an initial repertoire.

Hope that helps. I always assumed this was common knowledge, since the books can be tracked down if you look hard enough, but perhaps it is not.

Dustin