NATO Sea Shanties

I’d like to tell you about the NATO Sea Shanties dream I had last night.

Yes. Official NATO sea shanties.

Between doing lots of procedures documentation at work, watching pirate dramas such as Our Flag Means Death, and thinking a lot about NATO for NO REASON WHATSOEVER 🙃, my mind concocted the bizarre scenario below – in-between other, less lucid dreams.

So, my dream took place at some point in the 18th century. For some reason, Britain, France, and the United States had all decided that instead of fighting eachother all the time, it would be just a capital idea to start NATO two-hundred years in advance. Get a jump start on things. Very efficient thinking.

The first step in a cohesive military alliance is to start harmonizing your martial structures and procedures. Since this was the 18th century, the most important military actions would be naval actions. Thus, we (myself and the other characters) were onboard a sailing ship. It had been decided, you see, that there would be an Official Book of NATO Sea Shanties, corresponding with important procedures which required a high degree of coordination and precise adherence to the procedure.

This was because it was expected that British and French sailors might be serving on American ships and vice-versa and whatnot. The shanties needed to be catchy enough that they’d be instantly memorable and distinct. The lyrics – while in English – also needed to be simple enough so that French sailors who only understood English as a second language would be able to reconcile the lyrics with what they were doing. In addition to all of this, they needed to rhyme and scan.

So you see, this is an exercise in documentation through standard operating procedures.
Only the documentation happens to be sea shanties.

The assemblage on the deck of this ship included naval admirals from all three nations, a few captains, foremen (the dudes who traditionally lead the crew in shanties), scribes, and some mixed sailors and crew from each nation to test their ability to do the shanties together.

Currently, they were working on a procedure shanty to have the test crew correctly load a cannon. In my dream – I shit you not – there was an actual goddamn sea shanty that went something like this:

(Note: Shortly after waking up, I made sure to sing this back in my head a few times so it would stick and I could write it down later. I assure you that this is 95% authentic.)

(Also Note: This all came from my mind and I have no idea how to load an 18th century ship’s cannon. Do not attempt to load a ship’s cannon using my dream’s procedure/shanty.)

The officers would carefully watch the foreman and the crew perform the shanty with the related task and scrutinize their performance and coordination. Afterwards they would consult with eachother and the foreman to debate if there could be improvements or modifications (ie: collaborative editing), which the scribes would take down if agreed upon. Then the foremen would confer with their crews, practice the verse, and try the procedure again.

One poor dude, unable to keep time, kept fucking up. Suddenly I was a junior officer, and thus was assigned to go over and chew him out. Fortunately, that’s about when I woke up.

I’d love to concoct some weird fanfic about 18th century NATO, but to write something like that you’d really need to craft a narrative critical of those NATO powers’ colonialism, and then I fear you’d end up with something that present-day Russia would enjoy a little too much.

That said, if you’d like to take my weird dream that mashed together standard operating procedures, sea shanties, NATO, and 18th century sailors into some kind of novel, play, musical, videogame or other fiction, please contact me.

Thanks for reading, fellow weirdos.

image credit: Cannon by JANIFEST via Depositphotos