The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties Quotes

“Before the days of factories and machinery, all forms of work were literally manual labour, and all the world over the labourer, obeying a primitive instinct, sang at his toil: the harvester with his sickle, the weaver at the loom, the spinner at the wheel. Long after machinery had driven the labour-song from the land it survived at sea in the form of shanties, since all work aboard a sailing vessel was performed by hand.”
― Richard Runciman Terry, The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties