Hugill's "Shanties and Sailors' Songs" (1969) calls L & M's LP "The Singing Sailor" "magnificent...a more true-to-life performance than previous record performances....Following this, several other discs came on the market, some good, some too 'arty.'"

He goes on to mention a number of other shanty and sea-song records without commenting on their quality.

In a last-minute footnote he describes MacColl & Seeger's "Whaler out of New Bedford" as "excellent." The same goes for L & M's "Leviathan" (aka "Thar She Blows!")

He presumably didn't know that some of the texts on both albums
have been artificially Americanized.