Book Lists

Books about Sea Shanties and Songs of the Sea

Chanteying Aboard American Ships - Frederick Pease Harlow
Lake Rhymes - Folk Songs of the Great Lake Region - Lee & Joann Murdock
Salt-Water Poems & Ballads - John Masefield
Sea Songs and Shanties - Collected by Captain W.B. Whall
Shanties and Sailor's Songs - Stan Hugill
Shanties from the Seven Seas - Collected by Stan Hugill
Sing Shanties & Songs About the Sea - Compiled by the Sing Shanties Songbook Committee
Songs of the Sailor - Compiled and Edited by Glenn Grasso
Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman - William M. Doerflinger
Songs of the Sea - Stan Hugill
The Revels Book of Chantey and Sea Songs - John Langstaff & George Emlen
What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?: Unexpurgated Sea Chanties - Douglas Morgan
Worth the Singin' - the Tom Lewis Songbook - Tom Lewis

Bibliographies: Shanties (extensive list, last updated 1997)

Maritime Books

A History of Seamanship - Douglas Phillips-Birt
Castaway & Wrecked - Rex Cowan
Far & Away - Alexa Chipman
Folklore & the Sea - Horace Beck
Frigate Surprise - Geoff Hunt, Brian Lavery & Nikolai Tolstoy
Lady Washington - Alexa Chipman
Marlinspike Sailor - Hervey Garrett Smith
Origins of Sea Terms - John G. Rogers
Pacific Graveyard - James Gibbs, Jr.
Sailors - George Goldsmith-Carter
Sea Chest (plans) - Tim Whitten
Sea Stories - Tony Tamer
Seamanship in the Age of Sail - John Harland
The Ashley Book of Knots - Clifford W. Ashley
The Great Story of Whales - Georges Blond
The Last Sailor - Neil Hollander & Harald Mertes
The Tall Voyages - Claire Rankin
Two Years Before the Mast - Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
West Coast Windjammer - Jim Gibbs

Rare and Out of Print Maritime Books

Great Sailing Ships - Franco Giorgetti
Great Stories of the Sea & Ships - Wyeth
Hail, Columbia! - John Scofield
Kedge Anchor - William Brady
Maritime Design - David Cordingly
Roll and Go - Songs of the American Sailormen - Bobbs-Merrill (1924)
The Ship - Retracing Captain Cook's Endeavor Voyage - Simon Baker
The Whale (Moby-Dick) - Herman Melville
Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor - Darcy Lever



About Port Townsend

Images of America - Port Townsend - Jefferson County Historical Society

If you have books to recommend, please email us at singshanties (at) gmail.com.