The original Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag had many things for which the game is still fondly remembered: boarding actions, the roar of storms, hunting legendary galleons, the rum-soaked romance of the Caribbean, and Edward Kenway himself — a pirate with questionable morals who gradually transformed into a hero of personal tragedy. But there's one detail that has stuck in memory more firmly than others — sea voyages on the Jackdaw accompanied by rousing sailor choirs.
In the 2013 game, shanties were collectible items: players would gather song sheets across the Caribbean archipelago, after which the crew could perform them while sailing. The upcoming Resynced remake will retain all 35 original tracks, adding 10 new songs and remixes. Additionally, the official album will include compositions that were not previously part of it, expanding the total playlist to an impressive 57 tracks. However, not everything sung by sailors is a shanty, so we have an excellent reason to figure out: what exactly are sea shanties?
Songs that moved ships
Imagine the scene: turquoise waters of the West Indies, the sun melting the deck, hands raw from rough tarred hemp, and two more weeks until the nearest port with rum and taverns. No smartphones, internet access not yet recognized as a basic right for sailors, and entertainment limited to rancid salted meat and tales from a one-eyed gunner. How do you keep from going mad and get thirty men to simultaneously, in a single surge, exert peak physical power? That's right — by striking up a song that's devilishly convenient for synchronously pulling a rope.
It's a widespread misconception that shanties are any music about sailors, rum, and the long road home. In reality, this is not the case. Ordinary romantic ballads about great battles or beauties in port were sung by sailors only during their leisure time. Shanties, however, were strictly a working tool and were based on a simple "call and response" principle: the shantyman would shout a line, setting the tempo, and the entire crew would join in the chorus, simultaneously exerting the necessary effort.
Depending on the task being performed on the ship, these songs were divided into several main types:
- Halyard shanties (or long-haul shanties). Used for hoisting heavy sails and yards. The rhythm here is drawn out: while the shantyman sings a line, the sailors grasp the rope, and on the chorus, the entire crew makes one powerful, synchronized pull. Example — Whiskey Johnny.
- Capstan shanties. These were sung when raising a heavy anchor. Sailors would lean into wooden capstan bars — long timbers inserted into a vertical windlass (capstan) — and monotonously walk in circles for hours, winding in the anchor chain. A measured, marching rhythm was needed here to keep people moving synchronously and in step. Example — Randy Dandy-O.
- Pump shanties. Used for pumping water out of the bilge with hand pumps. This was one of the most monotonous and exhausting jobs on a ship, so the song helped maintain a steady, continuous pace. Example — Leave Her, Johnny.
- Hauling shanties (or short-haul shanties). Intended for short but very heavy efforts — for example, when it was necessary to finally tighten a slack rope or slightly adjust the position of a sail. The shantyman would sing a short line, and the crew would make a powerful pull on the last word or syllable. Example — Haul Away, Joe.
- Walking (or running) shanties. Used on ships with large crews, when dozens of sailors would grab a long rope and, marching across the deck, pull it forward. Example — Drunken Sailor.
- Ritual (ceremonial) shanties. These songs were associated with ship traditions and rituals. One of the most famous examples is Dead Horse, which was performed during the "dead horse worked off" ritual. We will explain why sailors dragged a horse effigy across the deck a little later.
Note: it should be noted that this classification was never set in stone. On real ships, the same song could transition from one type of work to another — depending on the size of the crew, the traditions of the crew, or even the captain's whim. For example, So Early in the Morning was used as both a pump and a halyard song at different times, and Randy Dandy-O equally cheerfully helped sailors both walk around the capstan and pump water from the bilge. Conversely, the song Leave Her, Johnny, usually classified as a pump shanty, was often performed at the capstan as well.
In addition to their purely "working" utility, shanties also had an important psychological function — they were a legal way to let off steam. In the song lyrics, sailors would unreservedly curse the captain, complain about rotten salted meat, and the hard life. On land, such rebellion could easily lead to the gallows, but during hard work, officers consciously turned a blind eye to it — as long as the work got done.
For the same reason, good shantymen were valued highly. They were often forgiven for mediocre work on the masts if they could keep a rhythm, had a booming voice, and, most importantly, could improvise new bawdy verses on the fly. No one would listen to the same song for the hundredth time in a voyage, so the shantyman would rhyme jokes about the quartermaster's greed, port girls, or the ship's cook's stupidity right on the spot.
Guests from the future: debunking Edward Kenway's "pirate" hits
And now it's time to break the hearts of Edward Kenway fans. Black Flag begins in 1715 — at the twilight of the "Golden Age of Piracy." But the canonical sea shanties, in the form they appear in the game, emerged... only in the 19th century! From a historical perspective, Black Flag's playlist is a complete anachronism. And a double one at that: not only have the dates of the first reliable recordings of these songs shifted in time, but their meanings themselves have also changed — the lyrics constantly feature geographical names, professions, and everyday realities that were still far from the Caribbean of Kenway's time.
In the early 18th century, ship crews were enormous — especially on warships and pirate vessels, which required men for boarding actions and operating numerous cannons. There were enough people to perform work simply at the boatswain's command, and decks were usually worked in silence. The need for shanties arose later, with the flourishing of large merchant sailing fleets. Merchants began to economize on crews: voyages became more regular and faster, and crews significantly smaller. It was then that a handful of sailors needed strict rhythmic organization to perform work that previously required thirty men with just ten.
Moreover, modern research shows that shanties are not a "purely English" sailor tradition, as they are often presented. The genre was born at the intersection of cultures, in the vast Atlantic melting pot. African-American and Afro-Caribbean laborers played a colossal role in its formation — particularly cotton loaders in US ports, whose vocal traditions blended with Irish, British, and American motifs.
The developers at Ubisoft understood this perfectly but consciously took this step, creating a cultural collage for the sake of atmosphere. They honestly admitted this during the release of the original game. And indeed, if you quickly check the historical accuracy of the Jackdaw's playlist, it becomes clear that almost none of the iconic shanties can be confidently attributed to the early 18th century.
Take Drunken Sailor, for example. Its verses, discussing what should be done with a drunken sailor (such as shaving his belly with a rusty razor or keelhauling him), instantly create a pirate mood. However, the first reliable printed mentions of the song date back only to the 1840s. Moreover, it is one of the few shanties that was later officially allowed to be performed on Royal Navy ships due to its marching rhythm. But real Caribbean pirates of the early 18th century most likely had never even heard of it.
Leave Her, Johnny sings of bidding farewell to the ship: sailors complain about bad food, the captain, and a tough voyage, but they could only openly express this on the very last day, when the ship was already docked and the crew was pumping the last water out of the bilge. It's a kind of protest song before dismissal. However, it was documented at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when merchant sailors already had at least minimal legal rights and could afford to criticize the shipowner without much risk.
Randy Dandy-O has a similar story. Its lyrics celebrate a crew ready for storms and girls in the port of Valparaíso. However, the Chilean port itself only became an important point for English-speaking sailors during the gold rush and the rapid development of Pacific trade in the 19th century — long after the Golden Age of Piracy ended.
And finally, it's time to fulfill the promise and explain why sailors dragged a horse effigy across the deck in the song Dead Horse. In the navy, "dead horse" has long referred to the first month of service, when a sailor worked off an advance received and happily spent ashore. Hence the expression "flogging a dead horse" — meaning to work without hope of new wages. Sailors of the early 18th century might well have known this metaphor. However, the first known recording of the song dates only to 1845, and the colorful ceremony described in it — when the crew built a horse effigy, solemnly carried it across the deck, hoisted it to the yardarm, and threw it overboard — belongs to the traditions of the Victorian era.
Most of the other songs in Black Flag are also "guests from the distant future." For example, Lowlands Away was documented only in 1870, and Bully in the Alley, with its port slang (the word bully then meant "drunken fop"), first appears in sources only around 1914. Moreover, if you carefully examine the official Sea Shanty Edition collections, it becomes clear that Ubisoft did not limit itself to shanties alone. Part of the playlist consists of traditional drinking and tavern songs — for example, The Parting Glass, Star of the County Down, and Over the Hills and Far Away. These are folk ballads that were performed in port taverns, not while working with rigging.
If one is to look for authentic voices of the era in the game that the Jackdaw's crew could theoretically have known, one should primarily focus on the age of the songs. The oldest in the entire soundtrack turns out to be The Coasts of High Barbary. Its roots go back as far as 1595, when the first known version of the ballad about chasing French privateers was recorded in London registers. Although the song is indeed older than the entire "Golden Age of Piracy," the events described in it take place not in the Caribbean, but in the Mediterranean. An English ship engages in a fierce battle with Barbary pirates off the Barbary Coast of North Africa, knocks down their masts, and mercilessly leaves the drowning raiders to the fish. The song could well have been heard on decks in the early 18th century, but it has no relation to Edward Kenway's adventures.
Next comes Captain Kidd, which fits perfectly into the Black Flag chronology: it tells of the Scottish privateer William Kidd, whom British authorities declared a pirate and hanged in London in 1701. Although Kidd operated in the Indian Ocean — far from the West Indies — a cautionary ballad about his trial and execution appeared on broadsides immediately after the verdict and quickly spread through port taverns, so by 1715, many sailors and buccaneers could indeed have known it. But it's important to understand: this is not a shanty, but a so-called news ballad — a warning song. Sailors sang it as a grim reminder of the fate of a man whose body hung in an iron cage over the Thames for three years, deterring other sailors.
Finally, the third theoretical candidate is the ballad Spanish Ladies. It is first recorded in print in 1769, but presumably appeared much earlier and existed solely in oral tradition for a long time. Its origin is usually associated with the Anglo-Spanish Wars, which regularly flared up between the 16th and 18th centuries. At its core, it is a farewell song of Royal Navy sailors about parting with Spanish ladies and returning to the shores of England. The ballad's lyrics served as a kind of "living map" of the English Channel for sailors: the verses sequentially list the capes and lighthouses encountered by the ship on its way home. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine Edward Kenway's pirates singing a peculiar anthem of their sworn enemies — which cannot be said about the players.
Fresh blood and musical surprises in Resynced
Now that we've addressed the anachronistic nature of the original soundtrack, it's time to talk separately about all the new features that players will encounter in Resynced. To the delight of fans, Canadian folk musician Sean Dagher, along with his collective, has returned to work on the deck music, recording ten new compositions.
Now the Jackdaw's crew will be able to sing the famous New Zealand song The Wellerman, chronologically predating Kenway's era by a century and a half. It is accompanied by the classic long-haul shanty A Long Time Ago and the famous British naval anthem Don't Forget Your Old Shipmates, which many remember from the film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" starring Russell Crowe. In addition, Dagher has prepared several unique exclusive ballads that will be unlocked as the story progresses and tell about the main character's closest companions — Blackbeard (Burn' Blackbeard's Beard) and Stede Bonnet.
It's unknown if the musicians were forced this time to sing worse with each new take, to sing off-key and pretend to be drunk, as music supervisor Benedicte Ouimet did during the original recording years ago, but the new tracks sound just as authentic — like a choir of inebriated sailors shouting at the top of their lungs in the sea wind.
In addition, French musician Woodkid was brought in to record a remix of the iconic Leave Her Johnny, and Sarah Greene, who voiced Anne Bonny, re-recorded The Parting Glass and a new solo composition — Here's a Health to the Company (Anne Bonny's Version). As a bonus, other old compositions, such as Malaguena, Polo, and Solea, which quietly played in the background thirteen years ago but were not included in the official soundtrack, were added to the digital soundtrack.
Why will we sing along with the Jackdaw's crew?
Why did these age-old melodies — both those we know by heart and those we are yet to hear in the remake — make us, and will surely make us, sing along? It's all about the very structure of the genre. A shanty is music stripped of everything superfluous. It has no complex instrumental parts: only voice, rhythm, and a simple structure. The shantyman's verses could be anything, but the chorus always remained short, monumental, and memorable from the first listen.
At the same time, the "call and response" structure works on the level of basic psychological triggers: when you hear the lone voice of the shantyman, your brain is already waiting for the moment when it turns into a powerful choir, and you physically want to sing along, becoming a part of it. This effect works especially strongly in single-player games, giving the player a sense of belonging to a large collective — and at the same time turns shanties into an ideal prototype of modern viral tracks. And the fact that this "virality" feels great centuries later was clearly demonstrated by the ShantyTok phenomenon, which broke the internet during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2021, Scottish postman Nathan Evans uploaded a video of himself performing the old whaling ballad Wellerman to the internet and blew up the algorithms — the video garnered hundreds of millions of views. Users from all over the world began recording choral remixes using TikTok's "Duets" feature, layering bass parts, harmonies, and new voices. And even if Wellerman is not strictly a shanty, the phenomenon very quickly went far beyond a single song. In essence, the world went crazy not so much for Wellerman as for the "call and response" principle itself. People trapped in isolation desperately wanted to become part of a spontaneous, albeit digital, sailor's choir.
Ubisoft developers sensed this nerve long before TikTok appeared, so no matter how much Ubisoft is criticized for the historical inaccuracy of certain elements, I know one thing for sure: when Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is released on July 9, millions of players simply won't be able to resist singing along with the Jackdaw's crew.