Moving inland,

There's a wonderful family of African-American Steveadoring songs from the great lakes ports. They were collected by a member of the University of Michigan's Engineering English Department over his life. My failing memory obliterates all the details like the the song (words, tune, chorus, name - stuff like that) the Boarding Party did from this collection.

Unreliable fragments include:

I think the refrain was "Whose on the way boys? Whose on the way?"

It mentions Detroit as a port.

There's a reference to a "tub 'o suds" which Jonathan's research revealed was rot gut gin and peppers.

The cargo was copper "pigs" (ingots) which were off loaded on hand trucks.

Anybody have more on this?