“‘It’s Growl You May, But go You Must’: The Untapped Potential of the Sailor’s Chantey”

This article situates the chantey, sailing worksongs of the sea, within the field of Oceanic Studies and ventures the argument that chanteys should be viewed as maritime artifacts that will evolve interdisciplinary research dealing with the sea and sailing men. I begin by addressing the primary reasons that scholars have likely not performed close readings of collected texts and take time to point to the issues inherent in working with this genre, but then move to discuss the importance of engaging in such inquiries. The primary contention is that chanteys provide a further way by which scholars can investigate the life of the sailor and succeed in “acknowledging the sailor”, as Emily Cuming notes (2019), in ways that layer our understanding of his experience at sea and participate in viewing maritime history, as Marcus Rediker (2015) suggests, from the other end of the spyglass.