Chanties were born out of necessity, competition and greed. The 1830s to the 1860s, the great days of sail, when the capitalists were trying to squeeze every last drop out of the wind. Britain and America were vying for supremacy in sea-borne trade. Nearly all the merchant ships were undermanned and run on draconian rules. Round about 1830 the skippers in the Gulf had checquerboard crews. They spotted that the black watches were completing their jobs in half the time the white ones were. It's easy to guess why. Chanties move from the dockside onto the ships. English by then was the dominant language among the workers even in the Gulf ports where many spoke a form of French.

Oversimplified? Perhaps. Pick holes in this theory by all means. I would suggest that as other nations were not heavily involved in the competition at this time they didn't need the chanties as much. I can't account for the lack of them in other languages in any other way.