I don't know the source but if I had read that from a broadside I'd say it looked genuine enough, although it appears to be a description by someone not familiar with the scene. Yes the job titles are genuine and the language could be of 1714. I can't see anything that would make it into comedy and I've studied so-called comic pieces of the period.

I'm certainly interested in relevant sources to chanty and proto-chanty, but not in other forms of assistance to work such as practised in the RN, or of religious singing aboard ship.

Any references I come across to shipboard worksong I note, but I have lots of other interests and I don't spend a lot of time looking for them, which is why I appreciate what you are trying to do and what Gibb and Jon do very well.

As far as I can glean the taking of soundings has been common practice for many centuries in all cultures. A local version close to where I live was taking soundings with a lead line on the Dogger Bank in the North Sea to find the lucrative fishing grounds, but as Iais says it was a crucial exercise when approaching land. 'By the deep ...

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