Captain W. B. Whall

William Boultbee Whall (1846–1917) was a British Master Mariner, Board of Trade surveyor, and compiler of one of the most respected collections of sea songs and shanties. He was born in the village of Thurning, on the border of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, where his father served as rector of St James the Great church. His middle name came from his mother, Mary Elizabeth Boultbee, whose father was also a Northamptonshire rector. From 1854 to 1861 he was a chorister at Magdalen College School, Oxford, before joining the Merchant Navy at fourteen. He spent eleven years aboard East Indiamen, during which time he learned the shanties he would later publish.

After obtaining his Master Mariner certificate in 1878, Whall became a nautical surveyor with the Board of Trade, eventually serving as Principal Officer at Barry, South Wales, supervising sea vessels in the Bristol Channel. He contributed songs to the Nautical Magazine and Yachting Monthly before compiling them into Sea Songs and Shanties, first published in 1910. The collection went through multiple editions. Richard Runciman Terry, in The Shanty Book, wrote that “of all these collections, Capt. Whall’s is the only one which a sailor could accept as authoritative.” Musical arrangements were provided by his brother, the organist R. H. Whall. His niece Veronica Whall, a noted stained glass artist, provided illustrations for the book. He also co-authored Practical Seamanship for Use in the Merchant Service and wrote Shakespeare’s Sea Terms Explained (1910).

Whall died on 31 January 1917 at his home in Barry, which he had named “Thurning” after his childhood village.