It's pretty surprising to discover that the earliest printed version of the song in its modern form was in "The Week-End Book" (1924), a miscellany of prose, poetry, music, and puzzles, edited for a sophisticated readership by Vera Mendel and Francis Meynell. John Goss, English baritone and bon vivant, was the music editor and may have contributed the song, which is decsribed as a "sailor's forebitter."

The tune given is the familiar one.

                      THE FIRE SHIP
                
As I strolled out one ev’ning out for a night’s career,
I spied a lofty fire ship, and after her I steered;
I hoisted her my siganals which she very quickly knew,
And when she see’d my bunting fly, she immediately hove to-o-o.
                
       She’d a dark and a rolling eye,
       And her hair hung down in ringalets,            [sic
       She was a nice girl, a decent girl,
       But one of the rakish kind.

O Sir, you must excuse me for being out so late,
For if my parients knew of it, then sad would be my fate,    [sic
My father he’s a minister, a true and honest man,
My mother she’s a Methodist, and I do the best I can.
                
       She’d a dark and a rolling eye, etc.
                                    

I took her to a tavern and I treated her to wine,
Little did I think she belonged to the rakish kind;
I handled her, I dandled her, and found to my surprise,
She was nothing but a fire-ship rigged up in a disguise.    [sic
                
       She’d a dark and a rolling eye, etc.


The concluding stanza or stanzas are understandably missing.

It's doesn't make too much sense for the singer to recognize the woman as a "fire-ship" in line two only to be surprised in stanza three. It makes even less sense for him to wittingly accompany a "fire-ship."

"Siganals," "see'd," and "parients" suggest (truly or as parody) a   mannerism of some 19th century music-hall performances.