Davis & Tozer, inspired perhaps by L.A. Smith, deserve credit for creating public interest in shanties. Though Smith was the first to publish shanties in a book, they take up only a small portion of it, which is mainly devoted to other kinds of sea songs, many of them from non-anglophone cultures. Her tune transcriptions are often careless and her lyrics are generally brief.

D & T's book, however, is shanties only, of singable length, published with words that would be attractive to a general audience, and (very importantly) arranged as serious music by a trained composer.