1914        Unknown. "The Recollections of a West Indiaman, Being the Reminiscences of a Steamship Officer of His Apprenticeship in a Windjammer." The Master, Mate and Pilot 7(2) (July 1914): 38-40, 60.

A publication of The American Association of Masters, Mates, and Pilots.

Author was an apprentice in a West Indiaman, from October 1864. Served in a barque out of Liverpool, to the Leeward and Windward Islands (Barbados, Antigua) and the Guianas. He was a sailor for 46 years.

Could this be Bullen writing? 1864/1865 would not necessarily contradict his earliest voyage to the West Indies, as I understand it.

Re: his second voyage to Barbados, discharging cargo, and subsequent voyages, he notes the role and quality of Black chantymen. He remarks on what were presumably "hitches" in their singing. SHENANDOAH, LOWLANDS AWAY, and something called "Ladies, fare-ye-well" are the chanties cited.

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The cargo had be discharged by hand—that is, by a crab winch. Eight men manned the winch and it was hard work in the hot sun and very slow. It took fifteen to twenty minutes to heave a weight out of the hold into the lighters alongside. Of course the negroes gave a hand and the men would start a chantey, and when there were seven or eight ships in the bay with crews engaged in similar occupations we heard some verv fine singing. The negroes were the finest chanteymen. Their choruses were exquisite to listen to….

Owing to the trouble that our captain had had at various times with drunkenness amongst English crews he decided in the future to ship only negroes in the forecastle, and for the remaining years of my apprenticeship I sailed with colored crews. Many of them hailed from Baltimore and the cotton ports of the southern United States. They were fine sailors, these men, quiet, strong and respectful: but my pleasantest memory in regard to them was their chanteying. They sang the choruses in weird falsetto notes and with the fascinating pronunciation of the Southern darkey. They sang a chantey for every little job and the way they thundered out such plaintive melodies as "Shenandoah, I Love your Daughter" or "My Lowlands Away" made them a treat to listen to. I once heard a well-known prima donna in Liverpool say that our singing was the finest harmony she had ever heard, and I have seen crowds of people on the dock head there listening to our colored "jacks"' warping out to "Ladies, fare-ye-well" (an outward-bound song), and, as sailors say, "their tears were running down into the dock."
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