The Hammonds got three versions in Dorset, two in 1906 and one in 1907. This is presumably a collated text.

The Captain James form (I'd guess the -still inaccessible- Bodleian example to be one of those from the opening line) was included in the Nafis & Cornish Forget Me Not Songster (New York, 1835) in a long and coherent form (21 stanzas, perhaps copied from a broadside); the victim's name is Richard Perry, of which "Richard Paddy" above would likely be a corruption.

There is a 1959 Arkansas example at the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, incidentally:

Sea Captain