[1961:] limey - The origin of the Yanks calling English sailors 'Limejuicers' [...] was the daily issuing of limejuice to British crews when they had been a certain number of days at sea, to prevent scurvy, according to the 1894 Merchant Shipping Act (Hugill, Shanties 54)
It was both a forebitter and a capstan song and a very popular one too, especially in Liverpool ships. [...] It is a fairly old song dating back to the Mobile cotton hoosiers and has two normal forms: one with an eight-line verse - this was the forebitter form; and the second with a four-line verse - the usual shanty pattern. Doerflinger gives a two-line verse pattern as the shanty - a rather unusual form, and further on in his book he gives the forebitter with both four- and eight-line verses. He gives the title of the shanty as Paddy, Get Back and both his versions of the forebitter as Mainsail Haul. Shay, Sampson and Bone all suggest that it was a fairly modern sea-song and give no indication that any form was sung as a shanty, but all my sailing-ship acquaintances always referred to it as a shanty, and it was certainly sung in the Liverpool-New York Packets as such - at least the four-line verse form. [...] Verses from 11 onwards [of the 19 verses given, incl. v. 3, lines 1-4 above] are fairly modern and nothing to do with the Packet Ship seamen, but with the chorus of 'For we're bound for Vallaparaiser round the Horn' are what were sung by Liverpool seamen engaged in the West Coast Guano Trade. The version I give was often brought to a close by singing verse 14 as [v. 3, lines 5-8 above]. (Hugill, Shanties 240ff)
pawl - short bar of metal at the foot of a capstan or close to the barrel of a windlass which engage a serrated base so as to prevent the capstan or windlass 'walking back'. [...] The clanking of the pawls as the anchor cable was hove in was the only musical accompaniment a shanty ever had! (Hugill, Shanties 414)