Sailors' songs are back in style thanks to TikTok

You may have already heard this tune... Indeed, at the end of January, this New Zealand sea shanty is going viral on the social network TikTok.

©️Gallica - BnF

It all starts with a young Scottish postal worker, Nathan, covering a 19th-century sea shanty published on the social network in December last year. Very quickly, other users add their voices or instruments, and the video goes viral with over eight million views in just a few days! 

Sailors' songs for work or relaxation

This sailors' song tells the story of whale fishers, like many others at the time. In the mid-19th century, sailing ships were at their peak, and merchant ships filled the ports, with sailors singing at full work. For sailing ships, singing at sea had a particular importance and specific functions: synchronizing teamwork. 

With an enticing melody and easy-to-remember verses, these songs could be accompanied by instruments like the violin or the accordion.

There are also sailors' songs for different types of work, such as hauling songs for raising sails, heaving songs, pumping songs for bailing seawater from the boat, rowing songs, or unmooring songs.

All these songs often lightened hard work. 

We also find in sailors' songs laments, dancing songs, forecastle songs (where the crew rests), and port songs. 

Our ancestors' sailors' songs

If you have seafaring ancestors, no doubt they once sang the tune of one of these songs. 

In 1861, Gabriel de La Landelle, a French naval officer, novelist, and man of letters, published a collection of Poems and Sailors' Songs (available for free). You can find the Forecastle, Children of the Sea (a rowing song), the song of the Return to France to the tune of There Was a Little Ship, and many others. 

As true traditions, sailors' songs are an integral part of the Breton heritage. Every two years, the Paimpol Sea Shanty Festival, created in 1989, hosts groups from around the world to pay homage to these traditional songs and the maritime world.