I've always enjoyed Oscar Brand's recording of this song, with Erik Darling, from American Drinking Songs, Riverside Records RLP 12-630, 1956. (There's a pretty putrid version available on YouTube but it has neither the spirit nor the musicality of this one). Here's the lyrics (my transcription) and liner notes from that album.

6. THE E-RI-E WAS RISING: I heard about the canal from a truckdriver who picked me up on the old Buffalo Road during a raging blizzard. He told me we were driving above the roaded-over Erie. The song was one created in the days when flatbottomed barges floated the busy and prosperous Canal--manned by flat-bottomed bargemen. The singer should sound as is he were looking at the world through rye-colored glasses. [NOTE: Brand hams this element of the song up a bit too much, in my opinion, in his recording, and pretends to sound progressively more inebriated in each successive stanza]

We was forty miles from Buffalo, forget it, I never shall
What a horrible storm we had one night on the E-RI-E Canal
I was plumb full up of barley, and gettin' full of rye
The Captain he looked down on me with a god-damn wicked eye-ey-ey
A god-damn wicked eye

CHORUS
And the E-RI-E was a-risin' and the gin was a-gittin' low
And I scarcely think we'll get a drink till we get to Buffalo-o-o
Get to Buffalo

Now, the cook she bright red hair and a blazing yeller dress
I heisted her up to the top of the mast as a signal of distress
But the winds begin to whistle and the waters begin to squall
We'd had to pull the signal down on the E-RI-E Cana-a-al
The E-RI-E Canal

CHORUS

Four days out of Albany, the barge hit on a shoal
We'd like to have been foundered on a chunk of Erie coal
I hollered to the hoggie on the towpath, treadin' dirt
He jumped aboard and plugged the leak with an old red flannel shi-i-irt
An old red flannel shirt

CHORUS

Halfway out of Syracuse, a pirate I did spy
I could see the skull 'n' crossbones, they 'ere waving up on high
So I shouted to the captain "heist the flag of truce"
He says "Ya drunken bum, it's the Mary Jane just out of Syracu-u-use
Just out of Syracuse

CHORUS

By the time we got to Syracuse, the high-mule, he was dead
The pilot had a broken leg so I shot him through the head
The girls are all in the police gazette, the captain, he's in jail
I'm the only living son-of-a-gun that's left to tell the ta-a-ale
Left to tell the tale

CHORUS