I prefer using the word shanty myself. I took a choral class once at a City College and the teacher refered to shanties at one point and pronounced it "chanteeze" which I found sounded silly to my ear. I had always thought that shanty and chantey were pronounced the same.

I define shanty as a nautical work song. Forebitters or focsle (sp?) songs were sung for entertainment when off duty. Forebitters were just about any song. Some were sea related or just commonly sung ballads of the time while some were shore songs brought to sea. Shanties themselves were only sung aboard ships because it was considered bad luck to sing them ashore.

It is true that, to many people, the word shanty means any sea song.

Richard