There are many chanteys about Stormalong, the fictional sea captain who embodies all that is brave, kind, and pure; a sort of seagoing Paul Bunyan figure. This is a West Indian version, collected by Roger D. Abrahams in his book, Deep The Water, Shallow The Shore: Three Essays On Shantying In The West Indies.
LYRICS:
Oh, to me Liza Lee
Chorus: Yankee John, Stormalong
Stormalong, with the long boots on
Oh, Bully, night and day
Stormalong, an’ let she go long
Storm the ocean, night and day
Storm, and a Stormalong
For all the night and on we go
Stormalong, and le’ she go long
Oh, to me, Liza Lee
Storm de ocean, night and day
Storm, oh we Stormalong
Here’s a feast of variations of the chanty “Yankee John, Stormalong.” Chanties being an oral tradition during their days of practice, tunes naturally would vary a bit. However, perhaps in most cases, the tunes noted independently by various individuals actually tend to be pretty consistent. This does not seem to be the case though with this song—and perhaps not the case with many of the “Caribbean” chanties in particular. Or, I speculate, perhaps tunes weren’t all that consistent until certain core chanties of a repertoire were widely adopted among multi-national crews at a later point in chanty history.
The first example is based in a recording made of singers in South Hill Village, Anguilla, by A. Lomax in July 1962.
The second is based in 2 recordings made by Lomax around the same time in Newcastle, Nevis. The style corresponds to the version collected by Roger Abrahams at around the same time and place, as presented in his _Deep the Water, Shallow the Shore_ (1974).
The third is based in another recording from that time in Carriacou, Grenada.
The fourth example comes from Horace Beck’s book, _Folklore and the Sea_. Beck heard it in the 1960s, too, I believe in Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Beck’s transcription, or rather the correspondence of his tune notation to his given text, is vague, so I had to do some guess-work in piecing it together.
Notice that each island has a different version.
The fifth comes from the experience of an English sailor of a century earlier, John Short, whose singing was noted by Cecil Sharp (1914). The collector R.R. Terry also printed a rendition from John Short in the 1920s, but it is pretty similar and I did not bother with it.
The sixth and last example comes from another English sailor of the 1870s, who had worked extensively in the Caribbean and as a chanty man: Frank Bullen. It appeared in his 1914 collection.
The versions in both Sharp’s and Bullen’s collections gave only one verse, so I improvised some additional ones. For fun, I used some of the harmonies from the pianoforte accompaniments in their texts.
There is yet another version documented, by Stan Hugill, given in his 1961 collection. That one has a tune closest, I think, to Bullen’s. However, Hugill’s has an improbable rhythm. Given that it doesn’t make a lot of sense as a working rhythm, and given the fair consistency of the (differing) rhythm in all these other examples, it seems likely that Hugill, the odd man out, simply notated the rhythm incorrectly. Unfortunately, Hugill never seems to have made a recording of the song, so one can’t know for sure. I had made this rendition of Hugill’s version, according to his notation, at an earlier time:
The photos here bear no relationship to the songs. I simply inserted them as a way to mark the transitions between examples. The first photo shows West Indian seamen in London (year unknown). Next come portraits of veteran seamen who also documented chanties that they learned in their trade: John Robinson, James H. Williams, Stanton H. King, Albert H. Rasmussen, and Stan Hugill.