There is a December 1858 article by I. Allen (who looks to have been a student?) in OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY here, that describes "Songs of the Sailor." Please forgive me if we have covered it, but it is not jogging my memory.

A windlass song:

"We've a bully slop and a bully crew,
      Heigho, heave and go;
We've a bully mate and a captain too;
    Heigho, heave and go.''

Evidently, for topsail halyards:

"Oh haulee, heigho, cheeryman!
O! pull like brothers, heigho, cbeeryman,
And not like lubbers, heigho, cbceryman;
O ! baulee, beigho, cheeryman!"

Windlass, performed by "swarthy forms" "amid the barbarous jargon of tongues,"

" I wish I were a stormy's son;
Hurrah, storm along!
I'd storm 'em up and storm 'em down;
Storm along my stormies.
Hurrah! John Rowley,
John, storm along—
We'll storm 'em up and storm 'em down,
Storm along, my stormies.
We'll make them hear our thundering guns,
Storm along my stormies."

And then it proceeds patheticallv to inform us that "Old Rowley is dead and gone," and that "they lowered him down with a golden chain," and that they'll proceed to storm somebody or other.

So..."John Rowley" = "Stormy, John"?

Again at the windlass, it's the song Hugill called "Outward and Homeward Bound":

"And now our prize we'll take nu tow,
And for old England we will go ;
Our pockets all well lined with brass,
We'll drink a health to our favorite lass!
Hurrah! we're homoward bou-ou-ound!
Hurrah ! we're homeward bound."

But strange as it may seem, however varied the appearance and nationality of the ship and its crew, be they from Archangel's icebound coast, or India's coral strand, Saxon or Celt, Frenchman or Turk, Russian or African, we invariably find that the strain of the sailor's worksong has the same plaintive minor key, strongly reminding one of their similarity in this respect to the sad-toned melodies of the negro race.

I don't know about this "plaintive minor key" -- relatively few chanties are actually in a minor mode. It is possible that there is a sound to "typical" African-American songs --perhaps "blue notes" -- that, back in the day, people categorised under "a plaintive minor key." Still, the comments are interesting.

And one more passage. It is fascinating, at this early date, that someone would write an essay opining about the Black influence on sailors' work-songs.

Along the African coast you will hear that dirge-like strain in all their songs, as at work or paddling their canoes to and from shore, they keep time to the music. On the southern plantations you will hear it also, and in the negro melodies every where, plaintive and melodious, sad and earnest. It seems like the dirge of national degradation, the wail of a race, stricken and crushed, familiar with tyranny, submission and unrequited labor.

And here I cannot help noticing tho similarity existing between the working chorus of the sailors and the dirge-like negro melody, to which my attention was specially directed by an incident I witnessed or rather heard.

One day we had anchored off a small town, and soon the canoe fleet of the natives was seen coming off to trade. Suddenly a well known strain of music comes floating to us on the land breeze. "Where's that singing?" cries one, " can't be that yon ship is weighing anchor ?" " Why, it's the darkies I" shouts another of the listeners; and, sure enough, there were five or six hundred of them coming off singing in two parts and keeping time with their paddles to

"Heigh Jim along, Jim along Josey, Heigh Jim along, Jim along Jo!"

They had made an advance in the scale of civilization and taken their place in the world of harmony. Then the conclusions of my speculation on the probable cause of this evident similarity between the chorus melodies of the sailor and the negro were something like these—First, the similarity of the object; that is, the unifying of effort in labor, and thus to secure simultaneous action, as in rowing, pulling, hoeing, &c., &c., by the measured and rythmical occurrence of vowel sounds.

Quaintness aside, theory-wise it sounds like it could have been written in 2010!