Piper sitting and playing on a ship’s capstan while sailors turn the capstan to weigh the anchor, presumably singing a shanty as they do so
16 January 2021
The word shanty has two distinct meanings in English, and in actuality it is two different words, each from a different French root. It can be rude hut or dwelling, and it can be song sung by sailors.
The hut sense is most likely from the Canadian French chantier, a logger’s cabin or camp, but also possibly influenced by the Irish sean tig, hut. Both French and Irish laborers in the wilds of Upper Canada in the early nineteenth century may have contributed to the creation of this word.
But the earliest recorded use of the word that I have found is from the United States, specifically in Ohio in 1820. But that does not necessarily negate the Canadian origin, as trappers and loggers would have roamed freely in the wilds of the frontier. And it is clear from the early sources that the term existed in oral use for some time before appearing in a published source. In a letter to his brother, dated 7 October 1820, Zerah Hawley writes of his travels in northeastern Ohio:
October 7 [1820].—Rode to a part of H[arpersfiel]d, to see a child sick of the intermittent fever, whose parents with two children, lived in what is here called a Shanty. This is a hovel of about ten feet by eight, made somewhat in the form of an ordinary cow-house, having but an half roof, or roof on one side. It is however, inclosed on all sides.
In his 1849 autobiography, Scots-Canadian trader and explorer John McLean writes of his travels in Quebec in September 1822. While this passage is written decades after the fact, it remains good evidence of the term’s existence in the early 1820s:
My man had visited the Indian on several occasions during the previous winter, and told me that he usually halted at a Chantier,* on the way to the lodge. We arrived late in the evening at the locality in question, and finding a quantity of timber collected on the ices, concluded that the shanty must be close at hand. We accordingly followed the lumber-track until we reached the hut which had formerly afforded such comfortable accommodation to my companion.
And McLean’s note on chantier reads:
* The hut used by the lumbermen, and the root of the well-known “shanty.”
Shanty, meaning a sailor’s song, appears somewhat later and, while also from French, has a very different origin. This one is quite straightforward and obvious; it’s from the French chantez, the imperative of chanter, to sing. The word can be dated to the 1860s. but may be much older in sailor’s lingo. But it is not recorded in Smyth’s 1867 Sailor’s Word Book (that source only records the hut sense), so it is likely not that much older in oral use.
An article on sea shanties appears in the British magazine Once a Week on 1 August 1868:
SHANTY—a word which those who are curious in etymology will at once be able to connect with chant—is the name applied to a class of songs but little known to landsfolk. They are the songs with which poor Jack seeks to enliven his toil.
And this appears in Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts on 11 December 1869. Many of the sentences are word for word as those in the 1868 article above, so it was likely written by the same person. Both articles are anonymous:
SAILORS’ SHANTIES AND SEA-SONGS
I once heard an old salt remark, that a good shanty was the best bar in the capstan; and he spoke truly. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra hand on board a merchantman, which, as a rule, is manned by the least possible number that the law allows, and often goes to sea short-handed, even according to the parsimonious calculations of its owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is by each mand doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the shanty, the true song of the “toilers of the sea.” It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the w[ork] on shipboard. It is the shanty that mast-heads the topsail-yards, when making sail; it starts and weighs the anchor; it brings down the main-tack with a will; it loads and unloads cargo; it keeps the pumps going; in fact it does all the work where unison and strength are required.
Sources:
Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, first edition (DCHP-1), pre-1967, s.v., shanty, n.
Hawley, Zerah. A Journal of a Tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-York, the North Part of Pennsylvania and Ohio. New Haven: S. Converse, 1822, 31. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.
McLean, John. Notes of a Twenty-Five Years’ Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, vol. 1 of 2. London: Richard Bentley, 1849, 57–58. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“On Shanties.” Once a Week, 2.31, 1 August 1868, 92. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. shanty, n.2, shanty, n.1.
“Sailor’s Shanties and Sea-Songs.” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, 11 December 1869, 794–95. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.
Smyth, W.H. The Sailor’s Word-Book. London: 1867.
Image credit: Anonymous, nineteenth century drawing.