National Museum of American History

The National Museum of American History – Behring Center is a part of the Smithsonian Institution.  It hosts a permanent exhibition:  On the Water: Stories of Maritime America.  Paul F. Johnston curated ten sea songs, mainly for clarity of lyrics and cleanliness; they play in the whaling section of the gallery and are also on their exhibit web site. You can visit and hear them here:  https://americanhistory.si.edu/on-the-water/fishing-living/commercial-fishers/whaling/sea-songs.

Beyond this exhibition, there is a comprehensive amount of maritime information available online from this institution.  Click on this link for an index.  The contents includes a large amount of material from the Smithsonian Folklife Archives and Collections.

Note that the NMAH also has a truly incredible and gigantic collection of sheet music in our Archives, but they aren’t specifically sea songs so much as general subjects, many of which relate to the sea, ocean liners, voyages to exotic places, and shipwrecks (like Titanic songs, etc.).

Contemporary maritime-themed musicians are not currently hired for live performances at this facility.