Sure...but we need more info! (Will we ever not? haha)

My perspective would be that the development of shanties and the origins of the song "Drunken Sailor," two different inquiries, do have a relationship...but not so relevant a relationship (this is where my opinion comes in) as some might feel.

I think the idea that the song DS is based in a previously known "air" -- in particular, one of a marching type....as might be played on fife/fiddle (the instruments of motivation in Navy ships) -- is very plausible.

In this case, the evidence is not, as Lighter obliquely suggests, that the song "Drunken Sailor" was "in use" i.e. as a shanty. Rather it presents the possibility that the composer had borrowed from a sailor song that was existing by the 1820s, or that some time after the 1820s sailors based a work song on a composer's popular air. Both seem plausible to me at this point.

That being said, I consider the *use* of DS as a shanty to be something appreciably distinct from the origin of its component parts.