Where and when did it become a shared practice among the different cultural groups? Was cotton-screwing, for example, a ground zero whence the practice was taken to ships? Or had the sharing already occurred earlier ? e.g. aboard ships, initially? Whereas in the past I have thought that cotton-screwing songs must be analogous in form to halyard shanties, after a close look at the literature, I begin to have doubts whether that can be said with any certainty. Interestingly, through the 1840s there are still not many references to what one might consider "classic" halliard shanties. For pulling songs, this decade gives us, with clarity, only the well-worn, old-fashioned "Cheerly"?. Along with "Grog time of day" (in two different forms) used for hauling to load cargo and?finally as a halliard chantey. I find the latter to be most significant, because it is (arguably) the one halliard song of the decade with something like the classic form. Still, it is shy of the most typical form (i.e. of later times). Needless to say, all this material needs much more mulling over. But if I may state, prematurely, my surprise ? that there is little evidence, by the end of the 1840s yet, to say that many of the chanties we now know (especially in the typical double-pull halyard form) had by then existed. Here is a reference to "A Hundred Years Ago" from a journal kept aboard the "Agincourt" on it's way to South Australia in 1848. The verse given is