Salty Singalongs

For its part, the Royal Mile Pub seems built for chanteys, with its antique fixtures, maps, hearty beer mugs and the oversize Royal Mile sign. Owner Ian Morrison, 32, whose parents started the pub in 1981, says his staff doesn't really mind this one night a month when vocal customers take over, even though they can often be seen lifting trays around singers' flailing arms, skirting past stomping feet and backing way up when singers spontaneously reenact climbing a ship rigging or fighting off a shark attack.

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The Chanteymen formed out of Ship's Company, a living-history organization that interprets "many aspects of maritime life between 1775 and 1865," according to its site, where you can see photos of participants in full uniform. The singers, who perform at more than 20 events a year, began rehearsing songs at the Royal Mile in 1996, and when people started joining in, no one stopped them. Now various Chanteymen lead sings and welcome anyone who wants to participate at five venues in the region, "each with their own kind of character," Peterson says (see "Sites for Singing Along" at right).

The purpose of chanteys -- with their frequent boat-rowing gestures and repetitive lyrics -- is clear. "They've been around since people started pulling on ropes," Peterson says. "That's what they're designed for, to make work easier. You'll find work songs in a lot of industries where things can be boring: railroads, mines . . ." He pauses. "Computers."

And maybe because they are meant to relieve monotony, a lot of chanteys are ridiculously fun. In the "hymnal" alone, there are odes to all kinds of liquids (martinis, rum, whiskey, coffee and many, many beers), to women (lovely Nancy, black-eyed Susan, Molly the Bold and the maid of Amsterdam), to Bertha's mussels and to a dog named Bunts. Many chanteys are like early road songs -- about heading for the Rio Grande, Maui or Sacramento -- and there's a lot of leaving and missing of homes, both old and newfound.

They can have a folk-tale aspect as well, with sea battles or fantastic chases a la "Moby-Dick." Herman Melville himself praised the virtues of the songs in his 1849 novel "Redburn": "I soon got used to this singing; for the sailors never touched a rope without it."

For modern-day singers, it helps that chantey tunes are often vaguely familiar; anyone who has ever been around a campfire probably knows one ("Sloop John B"? Chantey. "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"? Well, it's "The Eensie Weensie Spider," and much longer, more allegorical and involves the myth of Sisyphus, but still: chantey.)

They're also back in fashion, from the hugely popular "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies (the first film begins with young Elizabeth singing "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me") to music by such bands as the Decemberists, who ended their recent show at Merriweather Post Pavilion with a nearly 10-minute musical tale called "The Mariner's Revenge Song," for which they instructed the audience to screech like hungry whales.

Chanteys also have an improv element -- people constantly invent verses -- which makes them easy to join in on, a bit like "organic karaoke," says singer Janie Meneely of Wheaton, adding that verses are generally short, snappy and "sometimes a bit bawdy." They also "rarely carry any kind of political message," and they're often "irreverently secular" and "stem from an international tradition that crosses race and ethnicity," she explains. "What's not to like?"

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The singers at the Royal Mile on this night are an eclectic bunch. Steve Winick, 38, of Silver Spring (formidable hair and beard) keeps both hands in his pockets as he performs a booming "Congo River." Meneely (alas, no facial hair), who says she has celebrated her 50th birthday "several times over," sings a song she wrote with an unusual-for-chanteys female perspective called "China Sea." And Mike Bosworth, 54, of Vienna (one of the few cleanshaven men in the room) leads "Wild Rover," a tune involving much complex hand clapping and pounding on tables.

Many of them have considerable chantey credentials. Peterson and Bosworth were in the Navy for decades. Meneely, until recently the managing editor of Chesapeake Bay Magazine, has recorded several albums and is working on a new one. And when the singers need terms defined or explained, they often seek out Winick. A writer and editor with the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center, he has a doctorate in folklore and has taught courses on folk songs and ballads, making him the go-to guy for answering chantey riddles.