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Shanties
May 22, 2026 at 12:16 PM
Added a Shanty Tracks section and table listing the traditional songs in the pool with links to each track and to the vocalist, linked the Drunken Sailor mention, and added wikilin
Shanties are the background music tracks that play during ship travel in Windrose. The shanty layer fades in once a player ship leaves harbor and continues across open-water travel, with a separate track pool for general sailing and for combat-tinged stretches when a hostile ship is in range.
Shanties activate once the player ship is in open water and out of contested combat. Anchoring at a harbor or stepping off the deck onto land fades the layer out. Engaging a hostile ship swaps the standard shanty pool for a tenser combat layer that plays until the fight resolves.
The shanty pool draws from traditional sailing songs reworked for the game's setting. Drunken Sailor is the most recognizable entry, and its remaster trailer in February 2026 was one of the studio's pre-launch promotional pieces. Other tracks rotate through the pool during longer sessions; the rotation is large enough that crews who play multi-hour sessions cycle through several distinct tracks before any one repeats.
The shanties are traditional Age-of-Sail songs, public-domain works from the real sailing repertoire rather than original compositions written for the game. The vocal performances and arrangements are credited to shantyman Sean Dagher, and the same set of shanties is collected on the Windrose Original Soundtrack sold separately on Steam.
The following traditional shanties make up the in-game and soundtrack pool:
Track | Notes |
|---|---|
The most recognizable entry and the centerpiece of the February 2026 remaster trailer | |
A farewell pumping shanty traditionally sung at the end of a voyage | |
A halyard shanty about a sailor's fondness for whiskey | |
One of the best known halyard shanties in the repertoire | |
An up-tempo shanty whose pace fits the action sailing sequences | |
A traditional capstan-style shanty in the pool | |
A whaling shanty referencing the 19th-century Pacific whaling trade | |
A homeward-bound shanty about returning from a voyage | |
A traditional naval song included on the soundtrack | |
A traditional Liverpool sailors' song on the soundtrack | |
A sailing track listed on the soundtrack |
Hotfix 0.10.0.4.268 on April 30, 2026 made two related audio changes that affect how shanties feel during long sessions. Shanty cycling no longer repeats the same track back-to-back, so the layer rotates through the pool before any one entry can play twice in a row. Bonfire ambient music was extended by three minutes and the ship-travel ambient track was extended by forty seconds, both of which expand the perceived variety of the shipboard audio mix.
The pre-patch behavior could occasionally loop the same shanty across an entire boarding action or long crossing, which broke immersion for crews that played for multi-hour sessions. The cycling rule restores the variety the audio mix was designed to deliver.
Players who want to share favorite shanties or request new entries can use the official feedback platform (see Windrose Support). The studio has not announced post-launch additions to the shanty pool but treats audio feedback as part of the broader player-driven polish track.
