I mistakenly arrived at this website because of a search for the expression "forty years before the mast", which I thought I saw in a movie when I was young. I have since discovered that Alan Ladd, one of my all-time favourites, was in a movie called "two years before the mast", so I might have imagined the "forty" thing.
Neverthless I enjoyed the Bucketmouth McGinty dialogue, but noticed that GUEST,Allan S. quoted the last line of the verse as "Save the women and children but first save the alcahol", but a subsequent contributor's last line was "Save the kids and women first, then save the alcohol." They seem quite the opposite in meaning and given McGinty's proclivity for a drop, the former seems more appropriate.
Happy trails!