I also see Smith may have been influenced from reading James Runciman's _Skippers and Shellbacks_. I'll dig that one out in a bit.

***

Smith's _Music of the Waters_ was reviewed in _The Musical Times_ Vol. 30 for 1 July, 1889. Here are some excerpts.

The water music, however, with which Miss Smith has to deal is of a particular sort, and is primarily confined to those songs known as "chanties" (pronounced shanties, probably from the French chanter), which are sung by the sailors of the mercantile marine at their work, at the fo'c'sle head or during the dog watches.

"Chanty" was obviously not entirely common, and the author got it mixed up.

The fact that a large number of sailors' songs are primarily employed to regulate their movements in the performance of some manual labour, may prepare us for the apparently meaningless and perfunctory nature of the words attached to them. No doubt there is a substratum of sense somewhere, but one has to dive very deep to discover any coherence in the literature of the capstan-bar. Take, for example, "Old Stormy," of which the following lines may serve as a sample :—
...
The foregoing lines are decidedly difficult to construe —almost as difficult as the astounding English versions set to Brahms's new Part-songs (Op. 104), by Mrs. John P. Morgan, of New York. There are, of course, some good songs—from the literary point of view—in the repertory of the sailor, whether blue jacket or merchant manner, but they are few and farbetween. "Home, dearie,home," given on page 25, is a touching and pathetic ballad; but Miss Smith has erred in imagining it to be an old established favourite, and beguiled some of her reviewers into the same error; the words being really an admirable imitation of the old style from the clever pen of Mr. W. E. Henley. Miss Smith has a superabundance of enthusiasm, but she is conspicuously bereft of all critical instinct....

This want of arrangement pervades the whole book and deprives it of all value as a work of reference. Furthermore, the musical illustrations are almost invariably characterised by blunders of the grossest order. For example, on page 255, the Russian National Anthem is given with no less than eight solecisms—an inexcusable proceeding when one reflects that Miss Smith could have found it correctly given in at least a dozen collections. But we can almost forgive Miss Smith anything in our gratitude for the delightful bull which she has perpetrated on the following page. ...

;-D

Now there is a good deal to admire in this strange scrap-book of Miss Smith's—notably her enthusiasm in her subject. But it would be idle to pretend that she has fulfilled her aim. That aim, as we said at the outset, is an admirable one, but it has not been achieved by Miss Smith. Only a scholar and a musician could do justice to such a subject, and she unfortunately is neither.