The upload on YouTube is from the Bellamy Cassette - it chews in & cuts out before the end in fine old style, a bit like his life really...

The other versions mentioned in the MES Thread (see link in my post above) are of better quality (as far as I recall) but one of them lacks a prelude.

Thus it hovers in the liminal hinterland of the never-never, the forgotten classic that never quite was but that many feel (myself included) represents his finest work. Someone has lately commented (on YouTube) that it isn't Folk, rather that it's serious classical music. I've just posted this by way of reply:

Classical music? No. It's Peter Bellamy doing things in his idiosyncratic & idiomatically traditional way with a little help from his friends, Dolly Collins especially, so saying it isn't folk is to miss the point of just what Bellamy (and Collins) thought was folk. I agree that it's his best work (along with Keep on Kipling), and I agree it's criminal that it hasn't been officially released, though there was talk a few years back. There was a couple better quality recordings doing the rounds, but this is the cassette he used to sell at his concerts, so there's a poignancy seeing it here. What would PB have made of YouTube? A consummate eclectic archivist, he would have been a pig in shit for sure. Let The China Clipper be his epitaph...

And the cargo that she carried, ah, it was not China tea,
She took with her all the wonder and the romance of the sea...