Phi Alpha Theta presents Bethany R. Mowry Before and Beyond the “Wellerman”: Shanties and Sea Songs in the Golden Age of Sail
Virtual online through ZoomAs 2020 turned into 2021, TikTok turned into ShantyTok and the world rediscovered sailor songs. Scottish musician Nathan Evans’s cover of “Soon May the Wellerman Come”—a song that originated from the nineteenth-century Australasian whaling industry—led to an explosion of similar videos, as singers covered other historical songs of the sea or composed their own. The...