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SALTPETRE SHANTY

This capstan shanty is also known as Slav Ho or Slav Oh and comes from the Saltpetre and Guano Trades of the West Coast of South America. My version is melodically much the way it is done by the east coast shanty group The Boarding Party on their recording Fair Winds and a Following Sea, Folk-Legacy Records, 1987. Barry Finn posted a thread about the song on the Mudcat Café Forum back in 1998 (Mudcat thread). The lyrics I sing, in typical shanty man fashion, are my favorite verses from several versions I have heard. I've also heard this shanty on recordings by Pint and Dale and Stormalong John. Local singers Dick Holdstock and Peter Kasin tell me that in England the chorus is sung "oh, roll, rock yer arse, heave 'er high, oh rock her oh roll."

Here are the liner notes about Saltpetre Shanty from the Fair Winds and a Following Sea recording:

"Spike Sennit was his name. He was an able-bodied seaman, much of whose experience had been amassed while serving in the guano-and-saltpetre trade along the west coast of South America. Many sailors had followed that route, carrying cargo that would become fertilizer and other products. Few shanties have been preserved in print that reflect the travails of that less-than-idyllic existence, however, primarily, says Stan Hugill, who got this one from Sennit himself, because not much was printable. We've bowdlerized Hugill's version one step further, in fact, using "flash girls" to replace a Spanish word [puta] that is considerably more coarse than English equivalents such as prostitute.

Then there was Mike O'Rourke, another of Hugill's shipmates, who had shipped in many "Yankee blood boats" -- hard-case sailing ships from which crews would desert and fresh ones be supplied by the medium of shanghailing. O'Rourke's contribution was another shanty from the same part of the world, "Them Gals of Chile," from two of whose verses we adapted lines to add another element to Sennit's grim song. It was verse #4 that came from O'Rourke, however. The reference to "Pedro the Crimp" (essentially a kidnapper) was part of Spike's original. Doping the beer in portside hangouts could lead to drugged sailors who would wake up hours later, only to find themselves at sea in a totally different vessel, having been bought like barrels of salt-horse from procurers like Pedro. Sometimes, in fact, they might end up not at sea at all, but working ashore in such unsavory locales as Las Chinchas, a group of tiny islands off the Peruvian coast.

The tune, like those of many shanties, could have come from almost any source that struck in the shantyman's mind long enough for him to feel like setting words to it. Joanna Colcord pointed out the remarkable similarity between this one (or her version, which is close) and a 16th century German folksong called "Drei Reiter am Thor" ("Three Riders at the Gate"). Nor is it all that far from some American songs such as "Cryderville Jail."

You can find both Sennit's and O'Rourke's songs, by the way, in Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1961 and later editions), the undisputed champion of shanty collections, particularly if you want only one. More to the point, however, with a growing stack of recordings of the same finite repertoire, the book offers many lesser-known but equally exciting examples. Find a copy, take a deep breath, and start in on the ones you've never heard."

Notes about Saltpetre Shanty from Stan Hugill's book Shanties from the Seven Seas:

"The shanty I have named Saltpetre Shanty was a great favourite with crews of ships in the Saltpetre and Guano Trades of the West Coast of South America; it is one of four shanties rarely heard in other trades, the other three being Rollocky Randy Dandy O! , Serafina, and The Girls of Chili. They were all well known to Liverpool seamen, but have rarely found their way into print owing to the difficulty of camouflaging them: they were all obscene to a degree, even the refrains and choruses being extremely bawdy. Captain Robinson in The Bellman is the only person who has 'had a go' at titivating them up. As he points out: 'many of these bawdy refrains were nothing more than Sailor John's obscene renderings of snatches of "Dago" phrases picked up in the Chilian ports.'

I had this one from Spike Sennit, an old sailing-ship A.B. [able bodied seaman]. It was used at the capstan."

LYRICS:

SALTPETRE SHANTY

For the Spanish main we are bound away Chorus: Oh roll! For the Spanish main we are bound away Chorus: Oh roll! We are sailing away at the break of day Where the swift bonnitos and dolphin do play Full Chorus: Oh roll, rock her bars Heave her high, oh, rock her, oh roll! To old Callao we are bound away To old Callao we are bound away We're bound away from Liverpool Bay Where the flash girls o' Chile will steal all our pay Old Pedro the Crimp, boys, we know him of old Old Pedro the Crimp, boys, we know him of old He's primin' his vino and dopin' his beer To the Chinchas he'll ship us if we don't steer clear Them flash girls of Chile, they're hard to beat Them flash girls of Chile, they're hard to beat They'll greet us and love us and treat us to wine But the bastards are robbin' us most of the time So keep a sharp watch and a keen weather-eye So keep a sharp watch and a keen weather-eye On the girls from Coquimbo to old Coronel With their red-hot senoras from the far side o' Hell When the order comes round for to sail away home When the order comes round for to sail away home From some old seaport on the west coast of hell We'll sing adios and say fare thee well