Well, just when I am beginning to think that I'm heading into the "doldrums",

"doldrums |ˈdōldrəmz; ˈdäl-; ˈdôl-|
plural noun ( the doldrums)
low spirits; a feeling of boredom or depression : color catalogs will rid you of February doldrums.
• a period of inactivity or a state of stagnation : the mortgage market has been in the doldrums for three years.
• an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds.
ORIGIN late 18th cent. (as doldrum [dull, sluggish person] ): perhaps from dull , on the pattern of tantrums." [all of the above!]

there happens some good wind in the sails. Thanks, Gibb. I finished the day yesterday not being clear about where I was heading next. I'm still not clear this morning, but my Grandpa used to say, "We don't know where we're bound, but we're on our way!" I definitely feel like we're moving.   

I really appreciate you using this thread to present some of your thinking on these matters. It continues to help me clarify my own very *beginning* thoughts about these songs and their history. My ongoing project here is to try to imagine, within the bounds of historical context, what shanties *might* have been sung on board the "Julia Ann" in her voyages from San Francisco to Sydney in 1853-1854.

And perhaps it's time to clarify why I'm interested in the "Julia Ann" and in Captain B.F. Pond. Benjamin Franklin Pond was another of my great-grandfathers. He was one of my mother's grandfathers, the other being George Edward Semple who came over from Ireland in 1849, that I mentioned earlier. This is why I happen to have a copy of Pond's type-written "Autobiography". I got it from my own Grandpa, who was his son.

I'm not interested in focusing this thread on me in a personal way. But, I do have a personal interest in trying to reconstruct the history of these voyages and in trying to imagine what kinds of work songs were sung on them.

Gibb, I like your definition of a shanty/chanty [this sounds a bit too much like something an ice-fisherman would be singing to himself as he sits in his little shelter doing whatever it is these folks do in such a place - not knowing anything about such things myself]. You say: "that its core identity is a tune (roughly) and a chorus phrase". And then you say: " the form the chanties take, at a certain early period, at least, is something that I think emerged from African-American work song style". It is obvious that a lot of work has gone into the making of these two theories. I find them to be very clear and helpful points of orientation for my thinking on this. I also like your suggestion that you like the "term "African-American" in this case because it has the possibility of being inclusive of U.S. and Caribbean Black expressions, i.e. "American" as the Americas, the New World...and the idea that people of African heritage, having come to the New World, created a form of expression that was both based in African practices and also had an essential element of European culture to it".

My categories have been feeling clumsy and blurred and your definitions feel like a lifting of some fog.