And of course, from my post above, I said:

"While there is no written documentation from that period that I have been able to find with regard to the shanties sung on board the packet ships, there does seem to be general agreement about the songs that come from that era."

And I should have said:

"there does seem to be general agreement about the songs that *might have* come from that era."

I want to refer back to some excellent comments by Lighter earlier in this thread:

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In another note posted above by Gibb Sahib, he says:

" If you look at all the discussions that have gone on (e.g. on Mudcat) about the advent of this or that chantey, you'll find that most are not *positively* documented during the period under discussion -- that is, if your measure of positive documentation demands their direct mention in a piece of writing. However, based on their language, style, melody characteristics, and other historical info, they can be reasonably dated. I am saying this even as a natural skeptic. So I do appreciate the line of thinking that "these chanteys may not really be as old as we tend to think," but lack of references until later does not account for why they would have characteristics of earlier eras of song.

So if, for example, the goal is to produce some proof in the form of a literary reference that "Clear the Track Let the Bulgine Run" was being sung at a date before 1853, then you won't have it. There is no smoking gun. But there are many other pieces of evidence you could present to the jury to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was around by the 1840s. Is this the sort of thing you are asking, i.e. about alternative ways to "prove" besides this straight "literary mention" sort of thing? " (01 Feb 10 - 11:42 AM)

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While I am not really trying to "prove" anything, I am trying to take very seriously what both Lighter and Gibb are saying here. I want to recognize the clear limits placed upon us by historical documentation. And I also want to recognize the limits of "historical documentation" in the process of reconstructing what *could* have been the case within some reasonable parameters. I would prefer to think that I have one foot firmly planted in each place rather than that I am straddling the fence here. Sometimes I lean heavier on one foot than on the other. I agree with Lighter that one has to be careful about making later historical arguments based upon earlier "coulds". I hope that this is relatively clear.