Marc, thanks for the tip -- maybe I'll get a chance to ask those guys some time. Just the fact that you say "what I remember Stan singing" is encouraging, i.e. that an oral link to this exists, however thin.   Perhaps you'll agree that the text version of Stan-- which is matched quite faithfully melodically-rhythmically (though without "umph") by the Dutch shantykoor-- sounds "off" from what (I'd imagine) the actual chantey would sound like? (Yours is different from his version, yet it sounds like a chantey; this doesn't sound like a chantey to me, too irregular.)

I also wonder if it is just difficult to write this down in the old one-staff format of Hugill and older collectors, and even more difficult to sing as one person-- being that the solos and chorus may overlap., This is probably the case for lots and lots of chanteys. Even the "authentic recordings" of retired seamen from the early 20th century are mostly solo, making it impossible to know from that source alone whether there was a certain kind of overlapping rhythm on a given, lesser known chantey.

Q,
yep, that's the "Johnny Depp recording" I was obliquely referring to. It is probably, I think, not so much a "rendition" of the chantey (which I'm sure David Thomas & Co. know little to nothing about) as a "cover version" of Marc's recording. I stated as much to the author of this blog, where you can also hear the David Thomas version.