Melville's _White-Jacket_ (1850) was quoted earlier. Here's another quotation from that work.

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[pg90]
Now, the ship's cooking required very little science, though Old Coffee often assured us that he had graduated at the New York Astor House, under the immediate eye of the celebrated Coleman and Stetson. All he had to do was, in the first place, to keep bright and clean the three huge coppers, or caldrons, in which many hundred pounds of beef were daily boiled. To this end, Rose-water, Sunshine, and May-day every morning sprang into their respective apartments, stripped to the waist, and well provided with bits of soap-stone and sand. By exercising these in a very vigorous manner, they threw themselves into a violent perspiration, and put a fine polish upon the interior of the coppers.

Sunshine was the bard of the trio; and while all three would be busily employed clattering their soapstones against the metal, he would exhilarate them
[pg91]
with some remarkable St. Domingo melodies; one of which was the following:–

"Oh! I los' my shoe in an old canoe,
    Johnio! come Winum so!
Oh! I los' my boot in a pilot-boat,
    Johnio! come Winum so!
Den rub-a-dub de copper, oh!
    Oh! copper rub-a-dub-a-oh!"

When I listened to these jolly Africans, thus making gleeful their toil by their cheering songs, I could not help murmuring against that immemorial rule of men-of-war, which forbids the sailors to sing out, as in merchant-vessels, when pulling ropes, or occupied at any other ship's duty. Your only music, at such times, is the shrill pipe of the boatswain's mate, which is almost worse than no music at all. And if the boatswain's mate is not by, you must pull the ropes, like convicts, in profound silence; or else endeavour to impart unity to the exertions of all hands, by singing out mechanically, one, two, three, and then pulling all together.
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