Alden, 1882, cont.

He begins by speaking of the decline of sailors, and thus their songs. He presents it as a salvaging project. This is very different from the tone of previous articles. As I can see, only Adams, so far, has made a comment about steam's effect on things, and even he (3 years earlier) says that chanties are still going along well. Perhaps we can begin to see the early 1880s as the "beginning of the end" for chanties.

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Let us, then, in the interest of archaeological science, make an effort to preserve the memory of his songs before the last man who heard them, and can give testimony in regard to them, is gone.

The present race of marine brakemen who form the crews of steam vessels can not sing. There is but one solitary song that is ever heard on board a steam-ship, and that one belongs to the least artistic class of sailor songs. The "shanty-man"— the chorister of the old packet ship—has left no successors. In the place of a rousing "pulling song," we now hear the rattle of the steam-winch; and the modern windlass worked by steam, or the modern steam-pump, gives us the clatter of cogwheels and the hiss of steam in place of the wild choruses of other days. Singing and steam are irreconcilable. The hoarse steam-whistle is the nearest approach to music that can exist in the hot, greasy atmosphere of the steam-engine.
//

Alden was first to use the orthography "shanty-man."

He reinforces the idea of Black origins of chanties, which seems to be tied up with this consistent idea that they (or their melodies) are "wild." Funny that he thinks Emmett's minstrel songs were so evocative of "African melodies." I suppose nowadays we are so accustomed to these musical forms as "American" or even global popular music style that they don't stand in such contrast to supposed "non-African" melodies.

He says other chanties were the work of English sailors, but cites only CHEERLY. This is important because, as we have documented, "Cheerly" seems to have been one of the very early chanties that existed, at least as I allege, before an influx of African-American songs to the trade that exploded the genre.

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The old sailor songs had a peculiar individuality. They were barbaric in their wild melody. The only songs that in any way resemble them in character are "Dixie," and two or three other so-called negro songs by the same writer. This man, known in the minstrel profession as "Old Emmett," caught the true spirit of the African melodies—the lawless, halfmournful, half-exulting songs of the Kroomen. These and the sailor songs could never have been the songs of civilized men. They breathe the wild freedom of the jungle, and are as elusive as the furrow left by a ship on the trackless ocean.

Undoubtedly many sailor songs have a negro origin. They are the reminiscences of melodies sung by negroes stowing cotton in the holds of ships in Southern ports. The "shanty-men," those hards of the forecastle, have preserved to some extent the meaningless words of negro choruses, and have modified the melodies so as to fit them for salt-water purposes. Certain other songs were unmistakably the work of English sailors of an uncertain but very remote period. Of these the once famous " Cheerly, men," is a typical specimen. They were, however, frowned upon on board American ships because of their English origin, and no American crew would ever ape the customs prevailing under the flag of an effete monarchy by singing "Cheerly, men."
//

Of course, he is wrong about "Cheerly" in American ships. Perhaps this is a clue about what he *hasnt* read.

Next, basic features of the genre that ring true today. The emphasis on variability and improvisation remains.

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Sailor songs may be divided into two classes—pulling songs and windlass songs. The former were used merely to aid the men, when pulling on a rope, to pull at the same precise instant. The latter were intended to beguile the men, while getting up the anchor or working the pumps, into temporary forgetfulness of their prosaic labor. As might be expected, the latter are much the more elaborate and pretentious. The one class, however, passes into the other by subtle gradations. There are pulling songs which approach so closely the structure of windlass songs that they were sometimes made to do duty at the windlass or the puinp by shanty-men whose artistic consciences were somewhat dull.
All sailor songs consist of one or more lines sung by the shanty-man alone, and one or two lines sung by the men in chorus. Windlass songs always have two choruses, while pulling songs should have but one. The choruses are invariable. They are the fixed and determinating quantities of each song, while the lines sung by the shanty-man were left in a measure to his discretion. It is true that custom wedded certain lines to certain songs, but the shanty-man was always at liberty to improvise at his own pleasure. He was also permitted to slightly vary the melody of his part, and the accomplished shanty-man was master of certain tricks of vocalization which can not be reproduced in print, but which contributed vastly to the effectiveness of his sinking. Those who have heard Irma Marie in Barbe Bleu may remember that in some of her songs, notably in the first act, she had a trick of slurring from a note in her proper register to another in her head voice. This was one of the favorite mannerisms of the shanty-man.
//

Some mention at the end of vocal technique. To my mind, this sounds like normal scooping or gliding in singing that any non-classical singer would do unconsciously today?