First, there is a drunken fight. Next, a first mate aboard the ship tries to break into the captain's bunk, and as a result is taken away by the constable. There also seems to be a sheriff in the vicinity, by the name of John Stone, who will not leave someone alone. These are the unsavory conditions aboard the Sloop John B, as conveyed by the Beach Boys, just prior to the ultimate offending event:
The poor cook he caught the fits
And threw away all my grits
Then he took and he ate up all of my corn
For days now, I've been listening to the song over and over again. I've learned that Alan Lomax made field recordings of it in 1935 under the title "Histe Up the John B Sail," which led to versions by The Weavers and The Kingston Trio. It's believed that John B was Captain John Bethel, who sailed a sponge boat out of Eleuthera, in the Bahamas. According to legend, he ran a pretty loose ship. I've checked out a book on Caribbean sea shanties, "Deep the Water, Shallow the Shore." I've read that the pace and layering of melody in sea shanties might be a result of the rhythm of the sea itself. I've confirmed that the native Arawak grew corn on the Bahamas. I've learned that cooks on ships in the late 1800s were often in that role because they were unsuitable for hard physical labor, which might explain "the fits."
But why, I keep wondering, would the cook throw away all of the grits, and then eat up all of the corn?
It is plainly obvious from the double-usage of the possessive "my" that neither of these things belonged to the cook. I'm willing to accept that he was uncommonly temperamental, but for some reason I can't accept that he would throw out some of the food, and eat the rest. Shouldn't a sea cook, even one beset by fits, be more judicious with provisions? Even supposing that the sailor-narrator of the song was a tremendously annoying person to be around -- a possibility worth considering to be fair -- I can't understand the throwing away of the grits. Why not simply take them away and put them back in the pot? Or give them to someone else?
The answer is pretty clear: the Sloop John B was indeed the worst ship, and the vehicle for the worst trip, one could be on. It was an unreliable and overly vindictive environment for humans, and a wasteful one for certain iterations of corn.
There is, however, something very encouraging about the song. Notice that the sailor-narrator calls the cook the "poor cook," showing empathy for the man who capriciously threw out his grits and ate up all of his corn. That's a nice attitude to take. I hope that, should someone throw out one of my food items and eat the entirety of another, I can be similarly forgiving.
