Jabez 'Biggun' Smith sang My Ship Lost Her Rigging to Peter Shepheard in The Fisherman bar at Beachley Ferry, Gloucestershire, on 3 January 1967. This recording was included in 2000 on the Musical Traditions anthology of Wiggy Smith and other Smith Family members, Band of Gold. Rod Stradling noted in the accompanying booklet:

This is in fact a version of The Poor Smuggler’s Boy […] A song unknown outside England, it would seem. Roud has 32 references, but only 7 other recorded singers, of whom only Angela Brazil was from outside East Anglia.

The tune is basically the same as Wiggy uses for The Deserter and which, when Biggun gets into the extended second verse, you realise is also the same one Margaret Barry uses for Londonderry on the Banks of the Foyle.

Biggun Smith sings My Ship Lost Her Rigging

Oh my ship lost her rigging, got blown to away,
Which it found my father a cold watery grave;
Oh sad news to dear mother, father no more,
I’m left here to wander across the wild moor.

Sure some lady of fortune, she heard me complain,
She took me and sheltered me from the cold winds and rain;
So I well did my duty, I beared her [a] good name,
My missus she died and master I came;
Sure she left me five thousand, both houses and land;
If you’re ever so poor boys you might live to be grand.

No more shall I wander and I’ll sign no employ,
And I’ll tell of misfortune till the day that I’ll die.