Well, evidently this song needed some more tinkering. I've gone back to the original poem and substituted a few more lines in the first verse, and re-arranged the order again within the second and third verses. Maybe I've got it right this time (copy and paste into WORD/TIMES/12 to line up chords):

By Cicely Fox Smith, from SHIP MODELS by Cicely Fox Smith,
published by Conway Maritime Press in 1972. p. 87
from an original Country Life publication of 1951.
Adapted by Charlie Ipcar 8/2/07
Tune: after Old Orange Flute

A Ship in a Bottle

C-------------------------------------G------------C
In a sailormen's restaurant down Rotherhithe way,
-------------------------Am--------------G------------G7
Where the din of the docksides rings loud all the day,
--F----------------C-----------F--------------C
A-mong the stale odours of hot food and cold,
------------------------------G-------------C
In a fly-spotted window I there did be-hold –
---------------------------F
A ship in a bottle some sailor had made
------C------------------------------G----------------G7
In his watches be-low, swinging South with the Trade,
-----------F-------------C------------F----------C
While his mates were patchin' old dungaree suits,
------------------Am----------G----------C
Or mending up oilskins and leaky sea-boots.


Chorus:

C---------------------F
A ship in a bottle a-sailing away,
---C-------------------------------G-------------G7
In flying-fish weather through rainbows of spray,
------F----------C------------F-------------C
Over oceans of wonder, by headlands a-gleam,
----------------------Am------------G----------C
To the harbours of youth, on the wind of a dream!

That tiny full-rigger predestined to ride
To its cable of thread on its green-painted tide –
In its wine-bottle world while the new world rolls on,
Tho' the sailor who made it was long ago gone;
His fingers all roughened, toughened and scarred,
With hauling and hoisting, so calloused and hard;
So crooked and stiff you might wonder that still
They could fashion that ship with such cunning and skill. (CHO)

In fancy I saw him all weathered and browned,
Deep crows'-feet and wrinkles his eyelids around,
The hairy forearm with its gaudy tattoo
Of a bold-looking female in scarlet and blue;
In fancy I listened, in fancy could hear
The thrum of the shrouds and the creak of the gear;
And I thought of my youth with its pleasure and pain,
And the shipmate I loved was beside me again – (CHO)

Cheerily,
Charley Noble