Sailors, like the men in the military services, I am sure, watched their language when in the presence of "ladies," ship owners and general officers, but in the brothels, at sea, and on the march could give free rein to their imagination.
I wish I could remember the songs sung by my father and other members of the cavalry, learned during service in the First World War, and sung at reunions for years thereafter. In my pre-teens, I was too young to gather them in but a few fragments filtered down to us and were sung in the back of the schoolyard amid much sniggering. It didn't help that I (and many of my schoolmates) was unaware of what some of the terms meant.
Only after the long Victorian age, which in my mind stretched to the 1960s, were collectors willing to record them in their notebooks. Considering that the collectors were, for the most part, from the upper classes, I doubt that they would have even heard them.