Back when The Boarding Party was performing, occasionally someone would criticize them for their harmonies, because, they said, harmony was not traditional in shanty singing. But it was pointed out by Eric Ilott -- who of course had been a working shantyman in his younger days -- that most of the sailors had been raised singing hymns in church, and harmonies came naturally to many of them, so of course that's the way they sang shanties, too.

It probably wouldn't do to work too hard at it, though -- you don't want it to sound too "uptown"!