Product Description
New Zealand-based music teacher and folk music compiler Neil Colquhoun claimed to have collected the song around 1966 from one F. R. Woods. Woods, who was in his 80s at the time, had allegedly heard the song from his uncle. it was attributed to one D.H. Rogers. It has been speculated that Rogers was the uncle of Woods and that Rogers had worked as a teenage pirate or shore whaler in the early-to-mid 19th century, composing this and another song in his later years and eventually passing them on to his nephew as an old man. Nathan Evers recorded the work in 2021 during the COVID pandemic and it became a viral sensation with house-bound Tik-Tokers sparking a whole re-introduction of sea shanties in what was termed "Shanty-Tok."
This string quartet arrangement gives all instruments a chance at the melody, and adds the "affectation" of a foot-stomp and a shout at the ends of verses.
The history of whaling in New Zealand stretches from the late eighteenth century to 1965. In 1831, the British-born Weller brothers Edward, George, and Joseph, who had emigrated to Sydney in 1829, founded a whaling station at Otakou near modern Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand, seventeen years before Dunedin was established. The Weller brothers had on their voyage
to New Zealand brought in the 'Lucy Ann' (the Weller brothers' barque) a good deal of rum and a good deal of gunpowder. From 1833, the Weller brothers sold provisions to whalers in New Zealand from their base at Otakou, which they had named "Otago" in approximation of the local Māori pronunciation.
The song's lyrics describe a whaling ship called the Billy o' Tea [Note: a "billy" is a pot in which water is boiled to make tea or coffee] and its hunt for a right whale. The song describes how the ship's crew hope for a "wellerman" to arrive and bring them supplies of luxuries. According to the song's listing on the website New Zealandfolk Song, "the workers at these bay-whaling stations (shore whalers) were not paid wages, they were paid in slops (ready made clothing), spirits and tobacco." The chorus continues with the crew singing of their confidence that the "tonguin'" will be the last step of their plight. Tonguing in this context refers to the practice of cutting strips of whale blubber to render into oil. Subsequent verses detail the captain's determination to bring in the whale in question, even as time passes and the quartet of whaling boats is lost in the fight. In the last verse, the narrator conveys
how the Billy o' Tea is still considered locked in an ongoing struggle with the whale, with the wellerman making "his regular call" to strengthen the captain and crew.
Note from Wikipedia.
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