Lighter,

re: the "historical moment," a few posts back.

I concur with your thoughts; I was thinking along the same lines. I had chosen to use the word "moment" only to make a clear distinction between the a new phenomenon "hitting the scene" (even if it did take several years to be well incorporated) and the opposing idea that shanties developed gradually over a much longer period and could be traced to long-standing maritime practices and where merely further "evolved" at that point. Basically, I wanted to stress the idea of a critical time period, with a reasonable beginning and end.

I have become quite busy and scattered of late, and unable to follow up all the leads in this thread -- which are multiplying like crazy! (If he'd have had Internet in his day, I don't think Stan Hugill would have ever finished SfSS; he'd be discovering "Sally Brown" till doomsday.) However, I hope people don't mind if I contribute you some things now and then that don't strictly fit the flow.

Thanks to John M. for the chronological summary of the chanties discussed. I think we all know that that list can easily grow ten-fold, if for example we're to add information from (for example) other threads where songs have been discussed individually. Be prepared!

While its a tangent from the 1853/5/Julia Ann goal, I'd be interested in using such a list as John has started to map the existing chanties as per a slightly different time frame -- perhaps "up until (or up through?) the Civil War." It would likely give a good sense of if the"chantey creation era." For instance, one might wonder if many new halyard chanties appeared after the Civil War (my impression is: no). Even during the Civil War, I'd guess that most of the new chanties were adopted songs (e.g. "Marching through Georgia") for the capstan. "Roll Alabama Roll" is one Civil War era halyard chantey that comes to mind, but I'd be willing to wager that it was a new theme on an older chantey like "Roll the Cotton Down."

After that, one could begin to ask why fewer new chanties were being made up after a certain point. Had the core repertoire been established, and then it was perpetuated as custom or tradition? Did demographics have anything to do with it? Or was it technology?