Almost everyone who has sung chanties since WWII has sung them for entertainment, very occasionally for re-enactment. In the case of the former they are completely taken out of their original context and have become something else, no matter how they are 'dressed up'. They make damn good chorus songs especially when sung lustily although a few have been sung successfully in a much gentler style. To suggest that women can't sing in a lusty manner is patently wrong. Some certainly CAN.

What we perceive as choirs, those we see competing on TV, and in schools following very strict timing and in sweet voices certainly would not be suited to chanties, but those large untrained chanty crews we see occasionally at festivals, sometimes Dutch seamen, and fishermen's choirs, can and do make a good fist of it.

The opinion that SS and the BBC choir wouldn't get etc....is pretty irrelevant. SS was doing something he'd done naturally decades earlier and the rest was intended as entertainment.

I'm part of a 6-man group specialising in sea songs, waterways songs and chanties. We all have some experience of ships and sailing but we are under no delusions; we are singing for entertainment and education in heritage matters. Some of our chanties are accompanied, some unaccompanied, mostly sung with harmonies. At our chanty workshops we emphasize they wouldn't have been sung with harmonies or accompanied. We are not re-enactment.