Leave Her, Johnny

Usually sung to the same tune as Across the Western Ocean, this shanty “was reserved for the last task after the ship was fast to the pier, and the crew were about to go ashore - the last spell at the pumps. It was the sailor’s farewell song, in which he expressed without fear - since the voyage was over - his opinion of ship and officers” (Colcord, Roll and Go).

The earliest evidence of the song appears in Captain W. B. Whall‘s autobiography School and Sea Days (1901), placing it in the 1860s, though Stan Hugill believed it probably originated around the time of the Irish potato famine in the 1840s and was originally sung aboard the Western Ocean Packets. Hugill printed versions as both a halyard and a pump shanty in Shanties From the Seven Seas.

The song held a special status among the crew. Frank T. Bullen warned that to sing it before the last day or so of the voyage was “almost tantamount to mutiny.” Frederick Pease Harlow described the chanteyman jumping up on top of the brake beams while the crew worked the pumps for the final time (Chanteying Aboard American Ships). Because the voyage was ending and the men about to disperse, sailors felt free to voice complaints about rotten provisions, tyrannical officers, and miserable conditions that would have earned punishment at any other time. This gave rise to a great many unprintable stanzas.

Some versions mention “Liverpool Pat in his tarpaulin hat.” A tarpaulin is a heavy waterproof cloth made from tarred canvas, used aboard ships for covering hatches and cargo. Sailors commonly fashioned hats from the same material to keep off spray and rain, and the tarpaulin hat became so iconic a part of the seaman’s outfit that “tarpaulin” itself became slang for a working sailor — a rough, experienced hand who had learned his trade at sea rather than from books.