A sailor's life : the life and times of John Short of Watchet 1839-1933 /Tom Brown.

John Short ('Yankee Jack') was a merchant seaman and a recognised 'shantyman' taken on as crew because in addition to his experience as a seaman, he had the ability to lead work songs to keep the crew working at hauling or heaving efficiently. Short contributed fifty-seven shanties when interviewed by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in 1914, the majority deep-sea shanties. Short followed his father into the coastal trade at the age of nine in 1848 but soon moved into ocean trading routes. Short retired from the sea in 1901 and died in 1933, his death marked by an obituary in The Times. His story is told through his voyages and extracts from poems and shanties. The shanties are published in full with music in an appendix. Other appendices list and provide further details of his ships and voyages undertaken as well as a family tree.