Yes, Gibb, thanks for posting this. It's a long overdue statement of reality. And how ironic it is that the reorientation of the shanty toward English ethnicity has been carried out by performers of (I'd say) overwhelmingly multiethnic sympathies.

As you suggest, of course, it's been done unitentionally and unwittingly. English sailors indeed sang shanties, and most of the revival performers you mention were English. If they wanted to sing shanties, what could they have done? Well, of course, they could have gone out of their way to affect American and Caribbean accents, but we all know where that leads artistically.

A few points: if anything, the presumed "English ethnicity" of most shantying may now be moving toward a stereotyped "Irish ethnicity," partly for the comparable reason that many real shantymen were Irish
and partly for the commercial reason that for much of the public (particularly since the commercial success of Riverdance), trad = Celtic = Irish.

(The presumably lesser but real influence of Scots shantymen too is shown by the early adaptation and popularity of "Highland Laddie" as a shanty. And there's the unmistakably Welsh "Cosher Bailey.")

White American contributions to the genre (including, let's face it, the minstrel songs as we know them) get divvied up between "English" and "African American."

Also, it seems to me that you treat the question of Hugill's source(s) for his 1961 version a little too handily. We really don't know whether - or by how much - he might have been influenced by Lloyd. Maybe the influence went the other way. If Lloyd was one of Hugill's sources for his song, it can only be because Lloyd's version struck Hugill as utterly believable. He may have "wanted to believe," as you put, but given Lloyd's reputation in the revival, he had no reason not to.

But that doesn't affect your larger point. Hugill says he first learned the song from Harding of Barbados, and his non-Lloyd verses support his claim. Presumably (in the light of earlier texts and of Hugill's presentation itself) Harding sang "bunch of roses," regardless of anything Hugill may have learned afterwards. Your significant point remains that the shanty is evidently an African-American/ Afro-British Caribbean creation and by no means simply "English," as it is now perceived. (I think I mentioned the new "English pyrate" lyrics elsewhere.)

I agree completely that any relationship between roses and Wellington's army is fanciful. "The Bonnie Bunch of Roses,O!" is unrelated to the shanty, unless the shantyman just liked the sound of the phrase. The roses in it come from the monarchical "English rose" based on the symbolic roses of York and Lancaster (and thus the House of Tudor). The Napoleonic song contrasts the "Bonnie Bunch of Roses" ("England, Scotland, Ireland...their unity can ne'er be broke") with the Russian Empire. No redcoats appear in either the song or the shanty.

But what I mean to say above all is that you've written an excellent article. Congratulations!