Goodbye Fare-ye-well - Heaving Shanties Traditional Sea Shanties

Interesting Facts about the Goodbye Fare-ye-well – Heaving Shanties

Goodbye Fare-ye-well – Heaving Shanties was in the opinion of Stan Hugill, with “Rolling Home – Goodbye, Fare-ye-well”, the most popular homeward-bound shanty. This shanty was used for raising the anchor on the capstan or windlass (by windlass I mean anchor windlass when pulling the anchor happens in way of raise-up levers on both sides of the device, by moving up and down, the mechanism spin anchor or line, and each move pull anchor about couple inches). Below image of old fashion windlass.

The other story was about the capstan used later on sailing ships, it was a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to multiply the pulling force of seamen when hauling ropes. The capstan was used for multiple pulling (heaving) jobs, but raising the capstan was the heaviest job so the tempo was the slowest used on capstans. Below image of the capstan working on its sailors.

Goodbye Fare-ye-well – Heaving Shanties

Short story of the Goodbye Fare-ye-well

Stan Hugil knows four versions of this beautiful shanty which (he says) was common to seamen all over the globe. Here list of different common versions of this song:

a) Usual homeward-bound sentiments;

b) Verses taken from the old forebitter “Homeward Bound”;

c) The “Mikmaid”

d) Verses from “The Dreadnaught”.