The Captain grumbled at the sailors for singing 'Cheerly Men' at the topsail halliard instead of hoisting them up hand over hand, so they changed the tune to 'Hurrah my Boys' and the yards went up like smoke. 'Cheerly Men' is a slow-time and the pulls are long and far apart. It goes like this: In London city - hi ho - cheerly men (pull) The girls - are all - pretty - hi, ho, cheerly men (pull) Haul y I oh, cheerly men (pull) Haul y I oh, cheerly men (pull) It sounds very cheerful, but is only used when there are very few hands at the halliards and it is necessary they all pull heavily and together. In this case about 40 passengers had hold of the fall and the song went: Hurrah - my boys, we're home - ward bound Hurrah, my boys, hurrah sung in quick time with a pull at every other syllable... Many sailors' songs sound very well especially when pumping the ship at night - one man will sing the song and all the rest will join in with a regular rattling chorus, which I should think might be heard for miles in a calm night. The words of the song are usually extempore and do not possess any great poetical merit; the tune is everything. << less