Between “Yankee Ned” Clark, Capt. R.C. Adams &c &c &c, methinks it's been done as everything from a brake windlass chanty to a Christmas carol.

“...The men seemed of my opinion, for they went forward singing merrily one of those peculiar ditties that sailors always affect, and which you hear nowhere but in the forecastle, or else from the chanty-man when all hands are employed together doing heavy work.

The song in question ran, as nearly as I remember, as follows:

“Whiskey is the life of man––
                Whiskey, Johnnie,
Whiskey is the life of man,
So whiskey for my Johnnie, O!
Whiskey makes me work like fun––
                Whiskey, Johnnie,
Work from rise till set of sun,
With whiskey for my Johnnie, O!”

I wont give you any further infliction of this peculiar song, for, like the “Higgins story,” it takes a month of Sundays to get over the introduction; but I will add that if any reader wants to learn the air of this marine sonata, all he has got to do is to hum “Soapsuds over the Fence,” and then he can warble it to his satisfaction.
[Colonel Brevet, The Last of David Whippey, Ballou's Monthly Magazine, vol.40, no.2, August, 1874]