1908        Hubbard, W.L., ed. _History of American Music._ Toledo: Irving Squire.

This volume contains a chapter on "Patriotic and National Music" (i.e. of America). In the description of chanties, it's interesting to see, the authors have taken the view that they were mostly born of cotton-stowers' and Black work-songs. They seem to have used sources like RC Adams, Alden, and Davis/Tozer. The perspective, I suspect, is mainly coming from Alden. This would have been before the time, I argue, that voices were putting chanties as a mainly British product.

Pp133-135
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Though not properly coming under the heading of patriotic and national music, a word relative to American sea songs in general may here be appended. These songs are an essential feature toward the performance of good concerted work, and they are common to the sailors of all maritime nations. Although they may vary with individual characteristics of nationality, the theme is much the same and they are all sung to the accompaniment of the "thrilling shrouds, the booming doublebass of the hollow topsails, and the multitudinous chorus of ocean."

Most of the songs or chanties — the name being derived from a corruption of the French chansons or chantees — of the American sailor of today are of negro origin, and were undoubtedly heard first in southern ports while the negroes were in engaged in stowing the holds of the vessels with bales of cotton, while some few of them may be traced back to old English tunes. They were of two kinds — pulling songs and windlass songs. The pulling songs were used as an incentive to the men to pull together. One can better understand this from the rhythmic flow of the following stanza, which has its counterpart in the sailor songs of varied nationalities:

Haul on the bowlin', the fore and maintop bowlin', 

Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin', Haul!

At the close of each stanza the word "Haul" is given with marked emphasis, and the tug on the rope necessarily becomes stronger. The song imparts a unity of spirit and purpose to the work at hand.

The windlass songs beguile the men into temporary forgetfulness while working the pumps or weighing the anchor. One man, from his power of voice and ingenuity at improvisation, is looked upon as the leader. He begins by singing the chorus, as an intimation to the men of the manner in which it is to be sung; then he sings his solo, very seldom more than one line, and the men, from his musical intonation of the last word, catch the words and pitch with the inspiration intended. One of the best of windlass songs, in which the melody rises and falls in a manner suggestive of the swell of the ocean, runs:

I'm bound away this very day,
    (Chorus) Oh, you Rio!

I'm bound away this very day,
    (Chorus) I'm bound for the Rio Grande! 
   
And away, you Rio, oh, you Rio!
I'm bound away this very day,
(Chorus) I'm bound for the Rio Grande!

A favorite windlass song is that known as "Shanandore," the title being a corruption of Shenandoah, upon which river the song undoubtedly originated with the negroes:

You, Shanandore, I long to hear you;
      (Chorus) Hurrah, hurrah you rollin' river! 

You Shanandore, I long to hear you,
(Chorus) Ah, ha, you Shanandore.

In the West and South the chanties still may be heard. You may catch their strains upon the sweeping Mississippi, whose forest environment first caught the chansons of the French voyageurs. Even now the boat songs and working songs of the sailors in the neighborhood of St. Louis and New Orleans are suggestive of French influence. Along the Ohio, too, and other water-ways, these melodies in form of a low, hoarse chant, are still reminiscent of the old chanties.

On the Atlantic coast the fisher fleets are perhaps the only vessels which still make use of these almost forgotten melodies, for the steam-worked windlass, the pumps, the clatter of the cog-wheels, the shrieking whistles and hissing steam are not conducive to song, and the sailor of the Twentieth Century, like the landsman, has caught the spirit of rush and speed, and no one dare attempt to revive the old chanty songs on board the steamships of today…
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