Amazing what some people sing:

"Bellowhead's version of "Fire Marengo", which I suspect was taken from the Young Tradition, has the nonsensical "screw the cart and screw him down" instead of "screw the cotton..."

Having researched a bit on how cotton bales were actually screwed into a ship's hold, I came up with "Shift that bale and screw it down..." Actually, screwing the bale "in" would be more accurate, given that the tiers of bales lined along a ship's side were horizontal rows. The 4-person cotton-screwing team would use one jack-screw to form a gap between bales, and another jackscrew to shove a new bale into the gap. Too bad we can't post an illustration of the process here.

Cheerily,
Charlie Ipcar