The Wellerman comes

Sailor songs are probably as old as the seafaring itself, because in old times the sailors only had their own singing as cultural entertainment. The typical shanty is mostly in minor and is often characterized by the call-and-response between a soloistic “shantyman” who sings the action-bearing verses and the choir of all sailors in the chorus. Shanties were also sung during the work, and the shantyman determined the working cycle by his tempo.

The pattern described also applies to the shanty “Soon May the Wellerman Come”, originated around 1865. The text describes the battle of a ship’s crew with a whale, which was successfully harpooned, but which then tirelessly drags the ship behind it for weeks. (In the last stanza it is even said that the fight probably continues to this day.) Meanwhile, in the chorus of the song, one longs for the arrival of the “wellerman”. In the seas around New Zealand, “wellerman” was the common name for the supply vessels operated by the Weller brothers, which supplied whalers with stimulants such as sugar, tea and rum.

In early 2021, this song became world famous through versions of The Longest Johns and Nathan Evans. The old shanty spread “virally” mainly on the Internet and especially among young people, who probably felt a parallel to the present in the story of the song: Aren’t we – due to the actual pandemic – in a similar situation like those sailors? They are towed endlessly through the seas by a monster they thought they could easily defeat, and they can at best hope for temporary little pleasures brought by the “wellerman”. – From this point of view, the shanty is not only about the wellerman, but it “is” at the same time the bringer of musical joy in a time of privation, especially for us musicians.