It's Captain Calls, not Bold Privateer. The references specified in detail are all to examples of Captain Calls / Cried; Kidson, however, printed a set of Bold Privateer, and it is to that which the "Napoleonic wars" comment relates, though Kidson didn't actually say that: he wrote, "The story ... dates from at least our last French or American war." (Traditional Tunes, 1891). It isn't surprising that Huntington thought Captain Calls older than that, because it is older, at least in part (see above) besides being, I'm convinced, a completely unrelated song.

There's at least one other surprising mis-identification in Huntington that the Traditional Ballad Index has accepted uncritically. In the latter case, the reason for the mistake is fairly easy to see if you check his references, but I'm puzzled by this one. There's always a possibility that other people will be aware of things I don't know which would prove me wrong, but until and unless some evidence turns up I'm sticking to my guns.