Perhaps the earliest record of a direct predecessor of Cox's and Larner's now familiar "Cruising Round Yarmouth" are the words published by Frederick Pease Harlow (1856-1952) in his "Chanteying Aboard American Ships" (published posthumously in 1962).
Most chantey books are something of a hodgepodge, and Harlow's is no exception. It begins with a narration of Harlow's voyage to the East Indies aboard "Akbar" in 1876, interspersed with chanteys he heard (and sang) during that trip. It isn't clear just when Harlow wrote the book's manuscript, possibly at around the time he was writing his memoir, "The Making of a Sailor" (1928). "Chanteying" eventually drifts into pages of material taken from secondary sources, sometimes without acknowledgment. The book actually seems to have been unfinished.
Some of Harlow's lyrics sound rather literary, and how many of them - if any - were taken down in 1876 and how many recollected (perhaps with gaps filled as best he could) is unknown.
Harlow's texts are occasionally more forthright than those of other collectors, though there's still been bowdlerization and expurgation.
The verses he gives for one version of the chantey "Blow the Man Down," however, are what we're interested in here. One or two stanzas are evidently deleted, but it generally sounds authentic. Harlow could not have taken it from print.
Come listen to me and a story's my aim, And away, hey, blow the man down. It's of an adventure I met with a dame, Give me some time to blow the man down.
While cruising around, and out for a spree, I met a flash packet, the wind blowing free.
What country she hailed from. I couldn't tell which, But from her appearance she looked like a witch.
Her flag was three colors, her mastheads were low, She was round in the counter and bluff in the bow.
I fired my bow chaser, the signal she knew; She backed her main topsail and quickly hove to.
I spoke her in English, her tongue very loose,- "I'm from the 'Blue Anchor', bound for Paddy's 'Gray Goose.'"
"What is your cargo, my sweet pretty maid?" "I'm sailing in ballast, kind sir," she said.
"I'm as neat a young skipper as ever was seen." "I'm just fit for cargo; my hold is swept clean."
I gave her my hawser. She took me in tow, And yardarm to yardarm, down street we did go.
We jogged on together, so jolly and gay, Till we came to an anchor in Ratcliffe Highway.
Then, hoisting our topsails, and away we both bore, For a sailor's snug harbor, for a berth and to moor.
She brailed in her spanker, her stuns'ls and all, I rigged in my jib boom and gun tackle fall.
I've fought with the "Rooshians", the "Proosians" also, I've fought with the Yankees and Johnny Crapeau;
But of all the strange dames that I ever did see, She beat all the stinkpots of heathen Chinee. . "Paddy's Goose" was a pub in Ratcliffe Highway before 1842, and many others were called "The Blue Anchor." It is an ancient name: Ben Jonson mentioned a "Blewe Anchor Tavern by Billingsgate" in 1605. A "Blue Anchor" appears in other texts as well, including the 18th century "The Sailor's Meeting."
A "stinkpot," says Oxford, was a "A hand-missile charged with combustibles emitting a suffocating smoke, used in boarding a ship for effecting a diversion while the assailants gain the deck.”
“The heathen Chinee” is a phrase popularized in Bret Harte’s once familiar poem, “Plain Language from Truthful James,” published in San Francisco's "Overland Monthly" in 1870.
It was a common practice to put the words of forebitters into chanteys, and this seems to be no exception.