Soon May The Wellerman Come
In the winter of 2020 a Scottish postman posted a video of himself singing a song about a whaling ship, and within weeks sea shanties were being sung by people all over the world. That song was ‘Wellerman’, properly called ‘Soon May the Wellerman Come’.
It has become one of the best known songs in our repertoire, and one that we are very rarely allowed to leave out. But where did it come from, and who or what is a Wellerman?
The Story of the Song
The song tells the tale of a whaling ship called the Billy o’ Tea, which puts to sea and sets out to catch a right whale. The whale proves a good deal harder to catch than the crew expected, and the hunt drags on for days and weeks.
The crew keep their spirits up by thinking of the day the Wellerman will arrive, and of what he will bring: sugar, tea and rum. Once the whale is finally dealt with, they say, they will take their leave and go.
The Billy o’ Tea is thought to be fictional. A ‘billy’ is a can used for boiling water over a fire, a word from Australia and New Zealand, which is a good clue to where the song was born.
Who Were the Wellermen?
The Wellermen were connected with the Weller brothers, Joseph, George and Edward, who emigrated from England to Sydney in 1829. They set up a trading and whaling business and in 1831 opened a whaling station at Otakou, in the Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.
Their ships carried supplies to the whaling stations along the coast. Shore whalers were often paid in goods rather than money, such as clothing, tobacco, sugar, tea and rum, so the arrival of a supply ship was a very big event. In time, anyone who worked for the Wellers, or who brought supplies from their company, came to be called a ‘Wellerman’.
The Weller business did not last. Joseph died in 1835, the company was declared bankrupt in 1840 and the Otakou station closed in 1841. Commercial whaling in New Zealand carried on, however, until the 1960s.
Is It Really a Shanty?
Strictly speaking, ‘Wellerman’ is not a work shanty. As we explain on our main history page, work shanties were sung to keep a crew pulling in time on a particular job. ‘Wellerman’ is better described as a ballad, or a ‘forebitter’, a song sung for entertainment when the work was done, in the same family as the fo’c’sle songs we mentioned earlier.
Even so, its strong beat and rousing chorus mean that it behaves like a shanty in the right hands. Our view is that if a crowd can stamp, clap and sing along, then it belongs in a shanty set, and that is how it has been treated by almost every shanty group since.
How Old Is It?
Nobody knows who wrote ‘Wellerman’. It is often said to date from the middle of the 19th century, and the Weller era of the 1830s and 1840s provides the setting, but there is no written trace of the song from that time.
The earliest known version is a 1969 recording of New Zealand folk singer Neil Colquhoun, and the song was published in the 1970s in a collection of New Zealand folk songs. That is a long gap between the whaling days and the first record, and it is possible that the song was added to or reshaped along the way. As with so many traditional songs, the truth is probably a mix of old memories and later polish.
The TikTok Shanty Boom
On 28 December 2020, Nathan Evans, a postman from Scotland, posted a video of himself singing ‘Wellerman’ on TikTok. Other users began adding their own harmonies and instruments using the app’s duet feature, and the video snowballed into a craze often called ‘ShantyTok’.
The Longest Johns, a shanty group from Bristol, and many others also released versions, and a dance remix of Evans’ recording by 220 Kid and Billen Ted took the song to number one in the UK singles chart. Almost overnight, a song about a New Zealand whaling ship had become a worldwide hit, and thousands of people discovered that they liked singing in a crowd.
“Soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum!”
Why We Love Singing It
- The chorus can be learned in about ten seconds, so the whole audience can join in.
- The song tells a proper story, with a ship, a whale and a long wait for supplies.
- It sounds good with a big group of voices, which is just what a shanty crew has.
- It brought a whole new audience to shanties, and many of those people now come to see us sing.
We think that is no bad thing. The shanty revival has brought new singers to a tradition that was once in danger of fading away, and ‘Wellerman’ is the song that opened the door for many of them.
Come and hear it for yourself. Have a look at our Performances page to see where we will be next, and don’t forget to sing along. If you have a favourite shanty you would like us to sing, drop us an email at contact@theselseyshantymen.co.uk!