Well, OK, having confidently asserted there were no more verses, and having touted Tom's famous memory, I get home and find there is, in fact, one more verse not included above.

After the "dead duck" verse comes:

And, oh, that Galway skipper I never shall forgive.
He'd halloo like a porpoise to throw away the jib.
On Sundays while at rest he'd swear, "I'm only for your good;
So come up, me little hearty, and saw up all the wood."


Perhaps what EBarnacle has in mind comes from the album notes, in which Jonathan, writing about the "oyster wars" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notes that "Short-handed crews would sometimes be augmented by shanghaiing men from Baltimore, Washington and elsewhere, later 'paying them off with the boom' -- knocking them on the head and turning the boat (such as the pungy in this song) away from the wind so that the boom would swing across and sweep them over the side."

Lots more lore in Jonathan's famous notes.

Cheers again, Nancy