Stan Hugill traced the 'roll' shanties to loading cotton bales.

He said of 'Roll the Cotton Down':

"The white cotton stowers used it for screwing the huge bales of cotton into place down in the dark holds of the cotton droghers, heaving at the levers of the screws on the same words of the refrains as sailors would on halyards.

"Once the cotton season was over these men would ship 'foreign', taking their 'cotton chants' with then for use at halyard and capstan, hence a new infusion of shanty blood- coloured blood- entered into the field, which perhaps up to then had been dominated mainly by Irish-shaped work songs."

Shanties from the Seven Seas - Stan Hugill 1961 p154