What joy!

The book I'm working from is entitled A BOOK OF SHANTIES, by C. Fox Smith, Methuen & Co. LTD, London, © 1927, and seems to correlate with the index that Q has posted. So I believe we are working from the same book. As Q says, this book is hard to find and if you find it on a used book website the price is usually vey expensive.

In her introduction Smith had this to say about the efforts of some of her contemporaries to revive sea shanties in the British music halls ( pp. 14-15):

A few words, however, may not be amiss regarding the right way to revive the shanty. And in this connection, let me briefly describe a painful experience of my own as to how not to do it. It was at a music hall which shall be nameless. The curtain rose, revealing one of those impossible stage inns - made of creeper and green trellis, at sevenpence-ha'penny a lineal foot - called "The Jolly Tar," or something equally improbable. Outside this preposterous establishment were seated at a small table three large mariners, whose costume - an artistic blend of jerseys, seaboots, cheesecutter and stocking caps - suggested that they had made an indiscriminate raid on the slop chest at the Sailor's Home. Quoth one of these worthies to another: "Let's have a tchahntey!" and amid encouraging cries of "A tchahntey - yes, a tchahntey!" the individual addressed rose, and with a wealth of dramatic gesture, laying aside his churchwarden pipe, sang - well, I just forget what he did sing! It was too painful to listen to!

The feelings of some hairy shellback of days gone by, if he were to be set down suddenly in a modern concert hall where a highly trained artiste in what he would no doubt term a "b'led shirt" was giving a strictly bowdlerised rendering of one of his spiciest favourites, may better be imagined than described – very much better, since truth compels the admission that his comments would be in all probability more pointed than polite; but his astonishment, at any rate, would be beyond question.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble