Alan Griffiths,

Your Hawaiian explanation is absurd. Such word games ignore the context and history of this song genre in general, as well as the fact that a fine explanation is already there.

"Moke" is a Black man in the context of the ONE (?!) chanty documented to have included it in the chorus. It is well known that a great proportion of chanties were, or were fashioned from, songs belonging to African-American repertoire or American popular music (which was styled to include African-American earmarks). And Black people of the Americas probably sang far more chanties - a genre not limited to work over deep water - than any sunburnt Europeans frolicking with wahines in Maui.

Furthermore, one can search on the phrase "old moke" to find references to Black men. There is no need for such far flung speculations…and it makes me wonder why one would be interested in doing that in the first place.

Gibb