It also seems likely that at least half of the stevedores loading cotton would be Blacks, and Hugill does credit them as the origin for many of the Mobile Bay/New Orleans work songs that later went to sea as sea shanties. I do admit that I'm not really reviewing Hugill as I say this but I don't think I'm far off the mark.

Well, I do see the Nordhoff quote in Hugill's Sailortown, p. 182, that most of the cotton screwers in the 1840's were "English and Irish sailors" who had jumped ship to earn more money. However, cotton screwing shanties such as "Fire Maringo" sound to me like they originally come from a Black tradition of work songs, later adapted by the Liverpool crowd.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble