About

Sea Shanty is a type of work song commonly associated with sailors working on board of large merchant sailing vessels, and, erroneously, with pirates. A recurring theme in memes in late 2010s, particularly due to the 1700s Sea Shanties meme, in January 2021 sea shanties found major meme popularity following the Sea Shanty TikTok trend.

Origin

History

The practice of using simple chants to coordinate shipboard tasks originated in the second half of the 18th century among English and French sailors.^[1] In 19th century, these simple chants were generally called "sing-outs" and were not well-developed songs but rather chants structured in the "1, 2, 3" manner.

The 19th century song "Cheer'ly Man" is considered to be the first widely established sailors' work song. The usage of the song was documented as early as 1834.

Writers have characterized the origin of shanties to be in the era between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War, with the popularity of shanty songs peaking in the 1870. Some of the most popular shanties of the era include "A Hundred Years Ago", "One More Day" and "Stormalong". The word "shanty", the etymology of which is unconfirmed, originated in the mid-19th century, with the first documented use being a 1867 book about sailors.

The popularity of sea shanties in memes started with a June 2018 post by Tumblr user hustlerose. On June 4th, 2018, Tumblr^[2] user hustlerose posted an animated GIF of a 3D pirate dancing next to a boombox, writing, "me listening to modern pop music: arrr……. no good…. me listening to 1700s sea shanties," with the post gaining over 35,700 likes and reblogs in two years (post shown below).

Spread

In the following month, the screenshot of the post was widely circulated online. On June 6th, 2018, Redditor^[3] j_c_h88 posted the image to /r/me_irl, where it gained over 1,200 upvotes. On June 23rd, iFunny^[4] user Nytris reposted it, gaining over 57,700 smiles in two years.

On August 4th, 2018, YouTube^[5] user Dew posted a video in which the GIF was set to an accordion cover of the sea shanty "Drunken Sailor" (shown below, left); the cover version^[8] was composed by Okko Bekker for SpongeBob SquarePants and first appears in the 1999 episode "Squeaky Boots."^[9] The video received over 2.2 million views in two years. On April 5th, 2019, YouTube^[6] user KeyZ posted a 1-hour version of the meme (shown below, right) that received over 1.3 million views, with a 10-hour version, posted^[7] on May 6th, 2019, gaining over 1 million views.

On January 29th, 2020, Twitter^[12] user @AnarchoShanties posted a Normalize X meme that received over 25,200 retweets and 117,000 likes prior to deleting their account.

2020 TikTok Popularity

In late 2020, the popularity of sea shanties in memes was revitalized through the trend of singing and duetting traditional folk songs on TikTok.

On December 23rd, 2020, TikTok^[10] user @nathanevanss posted a video in which he sings a rendition of the folk song "The Scotsman" (shown below, left). On December 27th, he sang "The Wellerman", which inspired multiple users to create duets and duet chains (example duet by @jonnystewartbass^[11] and other users shown below, right).

On January 7th, 2020, Twitter^[13] user @Peter_Fries reposted the sea shanty duet chain by @nathanevanss, @jonnystewardbass and other users, with the post gaining over 4.6 million views, 62,600 likes and 242,800 likes in one week (shown below).

SeaShantyTok keeps getting better pic.twitter.com/yWLEHzlPlB

— Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021

Following the post, as well another viral TikTok^[14] by @strong_promises and its viral reupload by Twitter^[15] user @Beertheist, in mid January 2021 memes about sea shanties gained major popularity on Twitter and other platforms.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References