Surprised there's been so little discussion of this familiar chantey.

The DT version is a composite.

This text was collected by Robert W. Gordon, possibly in the San Francisco Bay area, about 1923. (I copied it twenty years ago from Gordon's papers in the Library of Congress.)

                         ROVING RANSO
                       (Topsail halliard)

Oh, we'll sing of Roving Ranso,
Chorus: Ranso, boys, Ranso,
Oh, we'll sing of Roving Ranzo,
Chorus: Ranso, boys, Ranso.

[Similarly:]

Oh, Ranso was no sailor....

But the son of a Boston tailor....

He shipped aboard of a whaler....

But he couldn't do his duty....

So they took him to the gangway....

And they lashed him four and twenty....

Aboard was the captain's datter....

She ran and told her father....

The captain being a kind man....

He took him to the cabin....

And fed him cakes and brandy....

And taught him navigation....

And now he's Captain Ranso....


One or two other early versions have "Rovin'" rather than the usual and now demanded "Reuben." The earliest text I've seen, however, - a single stanza from 1867 - has "Reuben." Captain John Robinson, recalling few lines from the same period, also had "Reuben."

For a chantey, the words of the ballad-like "Ranzo" are unusually stable. The well-known story rarely varies, and sailors seem not to have improvised the words very much: most variant words seem to reflect forgetting rather than creative innovation. (Bert Lloyd seems to have come up with the now-universal lines about a "bit more than she oughter" and "the hardest bastard on the go"; if not, where'd he get them?)

"Datter" represents an old-time New England pronunciation (between "flatter" and "hotter").

More in future.