Old Billy Riley
A song popular in Green's Blackwall ships sailing from London in the 1850s. It started life as a cotton hoosiers chant, and is African American in origin. Later it went to sea and became one of the most popular halyards shanties of the day. Hugill says: “They used Jackscrews to pack the cotton into the holds of vessels, to ram them up tight and so get more in the cargo hold. Lots of negroes were used in this labour, and their chants turned into shanties when the sailors used them for other jobs, often the tune remained and the words were changed to suit Sailor John. Negroes formed a large part of the crew of some vessels, and took their chants to sea with them, and a hell of a lot of ‘white mans shanties’ had negro origins.†According to the dictionary, a droger is a West Indian coasting vessel, with long masts and lateen sails (from the Dutch droogen -to dry- originally this was a vessel on which fish were dried.)
The Exmouth Shanty Men are proud to be associated with
