There is something to be said for each of these perspectives on pronunciation. I'm not yet convinced that we can know for certain what would have been the case.

But here is another angle. I think this pronunciation issue pertains (mainly at least) to the Peruvian port. I don't know how it was spelled back then, but nowadays it is evidently spelled "Ilo." Yet even if the idea of the port did become significant (I'm not yet seeing that it was necessarily conceived as such by sailors), it originally was not. Clearly, all in the African-American world of song pronounced "high low." Even "hollow" is very similar. In Southern U.S. (inclusive of Black) pronunciation, the dipthong "ai" (as in /hai/) sounds like "ah" (like /haa/). When we listen to speech in context, ir is obvious the Southern speaker is saying "high," but out of context and objectively it sounds like /haa/.

Anyway, the Black singers lerned this orally as "high-low". The sailors did, too. the American Adams even spells it "high low." Alden and Smith gave no indication they thought it was anything else. Even if Smith, who collected in England, heard it as "'igh-low", she had access to print materials to "correct" that.

But then comes Davis and Tozer. I doubt they looked at any print materials about shanties. Quite likely, Davis and his mates were English speakers wot dropped their H's. If that was the case, they'd have been singing "Igh-low"/"eye-low." This loss of the H would have contributed to the idea that the name of the port was being sung (along with, of course, the develop grammar that contained the preposition "to").

"Ilo" did not scan for Tozer as anything other than the nitrate port. A question would be whether the Peru idea was his own -- compelled by the needs of publishing to put down something that "made sense," OR if some White sailors, unfamiliar with the original use/pronunciation, had already started thinking about it as he Peru thing.

I think the texts will give us a pretty good idea that even though some sailor might have started thinking of it as Ilo, Peru, that perhaps most did not.

And whatever the case, they pronounced it as High-low/'Igh-low, depending on dialect (American/UK vernacular).

Whall's version of this however, adds more confusion. That this contemporary (could we call him that?) of Davis does not bring in any "Peru" angle supports the idea thatit was a fancy of the latter. But Whall also throws the curveball of a "Heelo" pronunciation.

Elephant in the room is Hugill's statements, which are very confusing. I think they are based on his reading however, and will get cleared up after we read what he did.