One aspect I'm interested in that doesn't get much coverage, is which seas, which ships, which trades were chanties generally used in. There are some sea merchant trades where chanties are very sparse if they occur at all, and I'm talking about records of actual chanties and references to them having been used.

We're all aware of the tea clippers, the wool trade, the meat run and the packet ships, the American Atlantic coastal trade, the trade between America and Europe, but there is very little mention of chanties in the whaling trade. I'm not aware of them being evident in the Baltic trade or to any extent in the North Sea, though latterly the Swedish and German ships used them on the longer trips. Chanties were certainly evident in the Pacific before the Panama Canal was built but perhaps not as much as in the Atlantic.