The songs on Ship Ahoy balance the romantic with the politically and socially conscious. In its review of the 2003 re-issue, Rolling Stone noted that the album's "main achievement was proving that it was indeed possible to be thoughtful and articulate without losing your funk."

The album's lead single was "Put Your Hands Together," a song urging cooperation and optimistic prayer for "a better day to come."[3] Rickey Vincent, author of Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One, describes the song as "fairly standard musically", "with a strong gospel feel."[4] The second single, "For the Love of Money," is aagainst materialism with a groove that Rolling Stone described as "downright orgiastic".The song was written around a bass line composed by Anthony Jackson, which in 2005 Bass Player Magazine described as "landmark." Bass Player went on to note that the song has "become one of the most recycled singles ever, sampled continually by rappers, and appearing on over 75 compilation CDs, numerous movie soundtracks, and, most recently, the theme for TV's The Apprentice."

The album's title song, "Ship Ahoy," was built around the theme of African captives being transported in a slave ship as part of the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade. It had originally been penned by Gamble and Huff for inclusion in the soundtrack to Shaft in Africa, but the producers decided instead to give it to the O'Jays as part of a concept album centered around slavery.[6] The song brought in the sounds of waves and cracking whips to add immediacy to lyrics which, according to PopMatters, personalized "the 'voyage' in ways that few black popular artifacts had previously done so—some three years before the publication of Alex Haley's Roots.[5] The book A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America notes that unlike the seminal work by Haley, "Ship Ahoy" is a hopeless, ominous song that offers "no sense that things are going to work out fine." In its 1974 review of the album, The New York Times characterized the song as "dark and occasionally spine-chilling." In 1993, The Miami Herald called it "a dark, atmospheric, frightening masterpiece that'll send a shiver up your spine