It appears to be a very nice rewrite of the eighteenth/nineteenth century foscle ballad "High Barbary," which Stuart Frank in his BOOK OF PIRATE SONGS has traced back to an Elizabethan ballad, circa 1596, entitled "The Sailor's Onely Delight, Shewing the brave Fight between the George-Aloe, the Sweepstake, and certain Frenchmen at Sea" which was quite a mouthful and clearly needed to be shortened if a sailor didn't want to be banned from his turn of singing in the foscle.

Frank goes on to say that while this ballad was most commonly sung in the foscle and the wardroom (of naval vessels), "it was also occasionally used before the mast as a chantey."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble