From the passengers' shipboard paper of the Blackballer "Young America," London to Moreton Bay, 1864, in C. Fox Smith, "Sailor Town Days" (Methuen, 1923):

"We might mention as peculiar amongst the other strange songs that we nightly hear, one which we think must be called 'Pat's Apprenticeship,' as it goes through the history of a number of years during which 'Poor Paddy works on the railway.' What becomes of him eventually we have not yet been able to discover, but we suppose that the line is not yet finished."

It was sung at the pumps.