Don Duncan, in the FSSGB Auxiliary Songbook, quotes "John Conolly, of Grimsby", as saying:

In the 1880s, a series of great gales wrecked hundreds of fishing boats along the East coast of Britain, and many men were lost. William Delf was a grimsby fisherman who tried to help the widows and orphans by writing poems about these disasters and selling copies of them, the proceeds going to the dependents of the men lost at sea. The "Threescore and Ten" poem was one of his better efforts, but nobody seems to know how it acquired a chorus.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: You're talking in my sleep. :||