G'day Dave Bryant,

Yes ... we're both right ... all the broadsheet versions, in the major British & Irish collections, seem to start (~):

    On a sloop ... bound for Barking

but the mendacious lady is encountered (~) cruising along the Ratcliff Highway. The point I was making was that the broadsheet publishers don't seem to have localised the town ... undoubtedly local singers did - but the "folk revival" versions weren't collected local variants, rather they were localised re-writes of the song as collected elsewhere - by bands seeking more repertoire.

I'm not word-perfect on the broadsheet lines ... my interest, in Australia, is in the locally collected versions - and definitely not the ones copied off import LPs in the '60s!

Regards,

Bob Bolton