Non-Brits may miss the nicety that Billingsgate (the original departure point) and Pimlico are not very distant from each other along the Thames, within metro London--the heroism of the journey was in dodging other craft, and I doubt that, even at the time of the song's inception, this stretch of the Thames would have hosted such a wealth of sea life as is named in the song--but perhaps seeking it there was a mark of his audacity.

One must marvel at the version where he sails out of Halifax and his little wibbly-wobbly craft nearly reaches Pimlico--Thor Heyerdahl, move over!

I haven't watched the movie "The African Queen" in years, but in the various sound clips of Bogart (& co.) singing this song elsewhere, the second and third verses are unlike anything which has been posted above or in the DT. To wit, the second begins "Out there on the briny deep he met with a mermaid" and the third, "He swam to the bottom then and lived very happily." (A suspiciously Hollywoodesque rewrite of the entire story line; I doubt Bogie learned that version from his grandmother.) Is that how he sang it in the movie? Did McCurdy sing lyrics similarly to Bogart or rather to the DT version? And how did his tune compare to Bogart's?