Hey, Gibb, I just lost my reply to your post, so I will try again. I hate that! Thanks for the clarification on the lists. I have been trying to sort out the difference between "Harding" as a source of a shanty and a shanty coming from the West Indies. I would welcome your "tally of possibly Caribbean-influenced chanteys in Hugill". I'm just getting ready to put up another list of the possibly Black-influenced shanties that "passed through" the cotton ports and were used as cotton-stowing/screwing songs and later became shanties. I've given the ones for which there is written documentation (that I know about so far) as well as the ones that Hugill "suggests" might have been used that way. It gets a bit fuzzy for me. His suggestions seem more than a little bit tentative. But maybe there are some broad outlines in all of this.

With regard to "Heave Away", I really don't have much to go on and would trust your judgement as to whether you think it is a shanty or not. Sandburg simply says: "This is among the few known work songs of the slave days of the American negro." (407). Hugill mentions the statement in A TREASURY OF AMERICAN SONG that this is a "*Negro fireman's* song". I don't have access to the TREASURY so I can't say any more about that. I really like your rendition, and I encourage everyone to read your YouTube commentary since it sums up very this song very well.