My favorite recorded version of this song is on a Fellside sampler record called "Flash Company!" that they released as a benefit for Nic Jones. On it a group calling themselves "The Famous Five (Less One)" does this as a choral close harmony, to a bouncy and totally inappropriate tune - but it works! The pseudonymous group is Martin Carthy and some of his friends; Martin recorded the song straight on his album "Shearwater"...

I know certain things were supposedly ill-luck on shipboard, but I'm not sure why the young woman has to die in this song - is it because she stole money from her parents, or because she was a woman on board ship, or because she was an unchaste woman (having produced a baby out-of-wedlock) on board ship? It always seemed grotesquely unfair that she had to die, but her so-called "true love" who got her pregnant, asked her to steal the money and persuaded her to go on board gets off scot free!