I appreciate all of the careful thinking about "Fire Maringo". It does seem as though someone is referring to someone without footnotes! The one seemingly solid piece seems to be that of Gosse. While Nordhoff has been generally accepted as the final word, all of his publicating and re-publicating gets very confusing. And he is unnecessarily vague with his dating. (I'm beginning to sound like a teenage romance novel!) However, I have had the same problem with Captain Pond's memoirs. Because his log book for the "Julia Ann" was lost, he is basing his accounts of these voyages on his memory and he is writing in 1895, which is forty years after the events (except for his account of the wreck and the rescue, which were written very soon after the events described). He, too, is often either vague on dates or leaves them out entirely. Fortunately, there are enough surviving independent historical records to reconstruct most of the facts of his voyages with regard to dates. If there was only something equivalent with regard to shanties! But there is not and we remain in the area of speculation and "historical coulds".

Gibb, thanks for correcting my nautical ignorance with regard to the use for "Fire Maringo". I'd like to think that it might have served as a halliards shanty on the "Julia Ann". Does anyone know of any reference to this song after/later than Nordhoff?