I got a 3-disk set called People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938. It has a 1933 Bob Miller recording of a song by Francis Sims titled "Crash of the Akron." The booklet has this fragment of the lyrics:

Seventy-three good men perished
They all died at their post
Seventy-three passed on to Glory
Out on that Jersey Coast

...An enraged element called lightning
With fury in its grip
Destroyed what once was such beauty
Destroyed that noble ship.

I'll get around to a full by-ear transcription sooner or later - but if anybody has the lyrics and can post them and save me the effort, please do. I gotta go teach my kid now.

-Joe-