Drunken Sailor

Okay, we're going to do my theme song here, and it's a great song for a sober Sunday morning.

It's called Drunken Sailor.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

I remember the days.

One, two, three, four.

Oh, what would you do with a drunken sailor? What would you do with a drunken sailor? What would you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning? Hey, ho, and up she rises.

Hey, ho, and up she rises.

According to the memoir Incidents of a Whaling Voyage in 1841, the chorus of which stamp-and-go shanty goes, "Ho, ho, and up she rises," three times, followed by, "Early in the morning"?

What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?

It is.

A line of sailors would march forward, pulling a rope along the length of the deck, constantly rejoining the back of the line as the deck ran out.

I think it's a funny way.

I start singing Drunken Sailor, but I'm like, what do you do with a drunken comic?

So I, you

know, just to kind of like get everybody's attention.

We are going to read them now.

Let us begin with perhaps the most widely known of all sea shanties, Drunken Sailor, properly titled What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor, is today treated almost universally as a comic song, a light-hearted list of increasingly absurd punishments for an inebriated crew member.

Put him in the longboat till he's sober.

Pull out the plug and wet him all over.

The verses that follow are not punishments handed down by authority.

They are proposals being put forward for communal consideration.

And the drunken sailor himself in the tradition of pirate adjacent shanty vocabulary, was not always a literal drunk.

He was a known figure in shanty lexicon, the man who had become a liability, the crew member who had talked too freely in a tavern, who had drawn attention to the ship, who had perhaps let slip something he should not have in the hearing of someone connected to the authorities.