I presume you mean "Deckie Learner", or "The Bear Island Grounds". I'd guess the tune is a variant of the "Red River Valley" tune, but maybe derived from one or more of the military parodies ("Dying Aviator", "Tale of Benghazi"). I still haven't recovered the words of "Benghazi" that I got from Vicki Lewis who got them from her father (see thread.cfm?threadid=143927 )

Ewen MacColl's "Gresford Disaster" starts off similar but wanders off on the last two lines of each verse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJhmuUnsXWI

I have just recently reached the point where I can print on CDrs, so I produced a batch for Fleetwood Museum. Please PM me your address and I'll send you a copy.

I always intended to expand this thread beyond the basic Final Trawl content. Over the years we have probably generated about twice as much again in terms of poems and song lyrics, and now that I have got the re-issue of the Final Trawl in progress, I hope to review the other recorded material we have, to see how much is listenable. Apropos of that, I am aware that all the sound-links once provided by Nigel Spencer's LostFolkTapes site are long gone, and i will look at putting material up on SoundCloud or YouTube eventually.

Ross