page_title: Drunken Sailor
section_title: As a popular song
hierarchical_section_title: Drunken Sailor / History / As a popular song
caption_attribution_description: English: Drunken Sailor Medley by John Baltzell, Edison ca. 1923. Deutsch: Drunken Sailor Medley von John Baltzell, Edison ca. 1923.
context_page_description: "Drunken Sailor" is a sea shanty, also known as "What Shall We Do with a/the Drunken Sailor?"
  The shanty was sung to accompany certain work tasks aboard sailing ships, especially those that required a bright walking pace. It is believed to originate in the early 19th century or before, during a period when ships' crews, especially those of military vessels, were large enough to permit hauling a rope whilst simply marching along the deck. With the advent of merchant packet and clipper ships and their smaller crews, which required different working methods, use of the shanty appears to have declined or shifted to other, minor tasks.
  "Drunken Sailor" was revived as a popular song among non-sailors in the 20th century, and grew to become one of the best-known songs of the shanty repertoire among mainstream audiences. It has been performed and recorded by many musical artists and appeared in many popular media.
  Although the song's lyrics vary, they usually contain some variant of the question, "What shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?" In some styles of performance, each successive verse suggests a method of sobering or punishing the drunken sailor.
context_section_description: "Drunken Sailor" began its life as a popular song on land at least as early as the 1900s, by which time it had been adopted as repertoire for glee singing at Eton College. Elsewhere in England, by the 1910s, men had begun to sing it regularly at gatherings of the Savage Club of London. In 1906, Percy Grainger recorded Charles Rosher of London, England, singing "What shall we do with a drunken sailor", and the recording is available online via the British Library Sound Archive.
   
  The song became popular on land in America as well. A catalogue of "folk-songs" from the Midwest included it in 1915, where it was said to be sung while dancing "a sort of reel". More evidence of lands-folk's increasing familiarity with "Drunken Sailor" comes in the recording of a "Drunken Sailor Medley" (c. 1923) by U.S. Old Time fiddler John Baltzell. Evidently the tune's shared affinities with Anglo-Irish-American dance tunes helped it to become readapted as such, as Baltzell included it among a set of reels.
  Classical composers utilized the song in compositions. Australian composer Percy Grainger incorporated the song into his piece "Scotch Strathspey And Reel" (1924). Malcolm Arnold used its melody in his Three Shanties for Woodwind Quintet, Op. 4 (1943).
  The glut of writings on sailors' songs and published collections that came starting in the 1920s supported a revival of interest in shanty-singing for entertainment purposes on land. As such, R. R. Terry's very popular shanty collection, which had begun to serve as a resource for renditions of shanties on commercial recordings in the 1920s, was evidently used by the Robert Shaw Chorale for their 1961 rendition. The Norman Luboff Choir recorded the song in 1959 with the uncharacteristic phrasing, "What'll we do...?"
  An interesting fact is that the song's accordion version is used as production music in the famous Nicktoon SpongeBob SquarePants, often times at scenes involving the Krusty Krab.
caption: "Drunken Sailor Medley" by John Baltzell
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