Hi Barry:
Since you originally started this thread in 1998 you may have already come across this version of the "Saltpetre Shanty." In case you haven't, this is from an album by The Boarding Party titled Fair Winds and a Following Sea, Folk-Legacy Records, FSI-109, recorded in 1987.
Saltpetre Shanty The Boarding Party - "Fair Winds and a Following Sea"To old Callao we are bound away
(chorus) Oh, roll
To old Callao we are bound away
(chorus) Oh, roll
We're bound away from Liverpool Bay
Where the flash girls o' Chile will steal all our pay
(full chorus):
Oh, roll, rock your bars
Heave her high, oh, rock her, oh roll
Old Pedro the Crimp, boys, we know him of old
Old Pedro the Crimp, boys, we know him of old
He's primin' his vino and dopin' his beer
To the Chinchas he'll ship us if we don't steer clear
Them flash girls of Chile, they're hard to beat
Them flash girls of Chile, they're hard to beat
They'll greet us and love us and treat us to wine
But the bastards are robbin' us most of the time
So keep a sharp watch and a keen weather-eye
So keep a sharp watch and a keen weather-eye
On the girls from Coquimbo to old Coronel
With their red-hot senoras from the far side o' Hell
Here are the liner notes:
Saltpetre Shanty
Side 2, Band 4
"Spike Sennit was his name. He was an able-bodied seaman, much of whose experience had been amassed while serving in the guano-and-saltpetre trade along the west coast of South America. Many sailors had followed that route, carrying cargo that would become fertilizer and other products. Few shanties have been preserved in print that reflect the travails of that less-than-idyllic existence, however, primarily, says Stan Hugill, who got this one from Sennit himself, because not much was printable. We've bowdlerized Hugill's version one step further, in fact, using "flash girls" to replace a Spanish word that is considerably more coarse than English equivalents such as prostitute.
Then there was Mike O'Rourke, another of Hugill's shipmates, who had shipped in many "Yankee blood boats" -- hard-case sailing ships from which crews would desert and fresh ones be supplied by the medium of shanhailing. O'Rourke's contribution was another shanty from the same part of the world, "Them Gals of Chile," from two of whose verses we adapted lines to add another element to Sennit's grim song. It was verse #4 that came from O'Rourke, however. The reference to "Pedro the Crimp" (essentially a kidnapper) was part of Spike's original. Doping the beer in portside hangouts could lead to drugged sailors who would wake up hours later, only to find themselves at sea in a totally different vessel, having been bought like barrels of salt-horse from procurers like Pedro. Sometimes, in fact, they might end up not at sea at all, but working ashore in such unsavory locales as Las Chinchas, a group of tiny islands off the Peruvian coast.
The tune, like those of many shanties, could have come from almost any source that struck in the shantyman's mind long enough for him to feel like setting words to it. Joanna Colcord pointed out the remarkable similarity between this one (or her version, which is close) and a 16th century German folksong called "Drei Reiter am Thor" ("Three Riders at the Gate"). Nor it it all that far from some American songs such as "Cryderville Jail."
You can find both Sennit's and O'Rourke's songs, by the way, in Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961 and later editions), the undisputed champion of shanty collections, particularly if you want only one. More to the point, however, with a growing stack of recordings of the same finite repertoire, the book offers many lesser-known but equally exciting examples. Find a copy, take a deep breath, and start in on the ones you've never heard."
Finally, Stan Hugill mentions, in Shanties of the Seven Seas, that the refrains in "Slav Ho!" are imitative Spanish words so they would really have no meaning.
Regards,
Radriano
^^Available on Radriano's CD, Time Ashore Is Over.
-Joe Offer-