Gibb-

Found it! The literary reference to:

Oh, this is the day to roll and go,
Hill-up, boys, hilo;
Oh, this is the day to roll and go,
Hill-up, boys, hilo!

is from THE MUSIC OF BLACK AMERICANS, Eileen Southern, W. W. Norton, New York, © 1971, p. 153.

The introduction to this illustrative verse, p. 153 above, makes clear that the verse is a plantation work song:

"Singing accompanied all kinds of work, whether it consisted of picking cotton, threshing rice, stripping tobacco, harvesting sugar cane, or doing the endless small jobs on the plantation, such as clearing away underbrush or repairing fences."

It's not clear from which of numerous source books such as memoirs of slaveholders, or narratives from former slaves, this verse came from but a dozen or so are mentioned earlier in the chapter.

To sum it up, so much for the fallacious claim that "hi-lo" or "roll and go" were terms which originated at sea. They both originated on the plantation at least as far back as the early 1800's.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble