No longer wondering about C. Fox Smith's original words. Danny McLeod was kind enough to sort this one out:

"Sailor Town" is in the book of the same name Sailor Town and also in Songs and Shanties was put to music by Dick Miles and a really good job he made of it.

The correct words are as follows: Dick has added a few words to it and uses the last verse as a chorus


SAILOR TOWN (Original)

Along the wharfs in sailor town a singing whisper goes
Of the wind among the anchored ships, the wind that blows
Off a broad brimming water, where the summer day has died
Like a wounded whale a-sounding in the sunset tide.

There's a big China liner gleaming like a gull,
And her lit ports flashing; there's the long gaunt hull
Of a Blue Funnel freighter with her derricks dark and still
And a tall barque loading at the lumber mill

And in the shops of sailor town is every kind of thing
That the sailormen buy there, or the ships' crews bring
Shackles for a sea chest and pink cockatoos,
Fifty-cent alarm clocks and dead men's shoes

You can hear the gulls crying, and the cheerful noise
Of a concertina going, and a singer's voice
And the wind's song and the tide's song, crooning soft and low
Rum old tunes in sailor town that the seamen know.

I dreamed a dream in sailor town a foolish dream and vain
Of ships and men departed, of old days come again
And an old song in sailor town, an old song to sing
When shipmate meets with shipmate in the evening.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble