The Songs We Sing When the Sea Tries to Kill Us

I've loved sea shanties for decades. Long before they went viral on TikTok, long before I knew I'd write a play about maritime disaster, I was singing them to my daughters as lullabies. The Mingulay Boat Song—a traditional Scottish shanty about returning home across treacherous waters—became one of their consistent bedtime songs. It's a core memory for them now: being small and safe in the dark, listening to their father sing about sailors rowing through storm and spray toward the distant shore.

I never imagined those lullabies would become research.

When I started developing 33 Lost, a play about the SS Rosecrans disaster and the Life-Saving Service crews who tried to rescue them, I expected to find stories of heroism and tragedy. What I didn't expect was how central music would be to those stories. But the historical record is full of it. Survivors' accounts mention crews singing as they launched lifeboats into impossible seas. Rescuers sang to keep rhythm while rowing through storms. And men trapped aboard sinking vessels—knowing death was minutes away—sang to keep their spirits up and their fear at bay.

There's something deeply human about singing when facing death. Music does things that speech cannot: it unites people, it releases emotional pressure, it creates shared purpose. When you're singing with someone, you're not alone.

The Power of Sea Shanties

Sea shanties weren't just entertainment for sailors—they were survival tools. The rhythmic call-and-response kept rowing crews synchronized, ensuring oars hit the water together for maximum power and efficiency. They timed the heaving on lines to set sails, coordinating the men to work as a more powerful unit. In twelve-hour watches, shanties broke the monotony and kept exhausted men functioning.

But shanties also did something more profound: they transformed individual fear into collective courage.

The shanty Leave Her Johnny was traditionally sung at the end of a voyage—a sailor's farewell to a ship (and sometimes a complaint about the captain, owners, or conditions). For the Rosecrans crew singing it while trapped aboard their dying vessel, it takes on devastating irony. They're singing about leaving the ship, but they can't. The voyage is ending, but not the way the song promises.

Row Me Bully Boys is a work shanty meant to keep rhythm during rowing. In the play, rescue crews sing it as they row toward drowning men through forty-foot seas. The song becomes a lifeline—both literally (keeping the crew coordinated) and metaphorically (a thread of humanity in the chaos).

The Challenge of Staging Music

As a playwright, I'm still working through how much music 33 Lost should contain. Too much, and it becomes a musical (which this isn't). Too little, and I lose an essential element of historical truth and emotional power.

The songs serve specific dramatic functions, and will be performed a cappella—just human voices against the storm. No instruments. No amplification. Just what the actual crews would have had. Because here's what I keep coming back to: these men didn't have orchestras. They certainly weren’t professional singers. But hey had their voices and they had each other. When the sea tried to kill them, they sang. When they couldn't save everyone, they sang. When they mourned, they sang.

An Invitation

If you're interested in maritime music, I recommend checking out the wonderful music of Bounding Main, a group of shanty singers I've been friends with since I first performed at the Port Washington Pirate Festival in Wisconsin almost twenty years ago. Also worth exploring: Nathan Evans, Stan Hugill's collections, or the Longest Johns on YouTube. Listen to Leave Her Johnny or Row Me Bully Boys and imagine singing them while rowing through a storm toward a sinking ship.

Then imagine you're one of the thirty-three men who didn't make it home, and those songs were the last thing you heard before the sea took you. That's the power I'm trying to capture in 33 Lost—not just the historical facts, but the human voices that sang through the darkness, even when they knew the darkness might win. The same songs I once sang as lullabies to keep my daughters safe in the dark, men sang to keep themselves brave when the darkness was winning.

33 Lost is currently in development. Follow along as I navigate the research, writing, and eventual production of this new play.