While I was doing some research on sailor songs in Victoria, British Columbia, last year I ran across this variant of "Seafarers" aka "Deep Sea Sailor" reprinted (twice) in the daily newspaper. This is certainly a very well put together song and I still wonder what it's origin was. This song certainly became a favorite of deep-water sailors:
Seafarers
Shanghaied in San Francisco, And we fetched up in Bombay; They set us afloat on an old Leith boat, That steered like a stack o' hay.
We panted in the Tropics, When the pitch boiled up on deck, And we saved our lives and little besides, From an ice-cold North Sea wreck.
We have drunk our rum in Portland, We have thrashed up Bering Strait -- We have toed the mark on a Yankee bark, With a hard-case Down-East mate.
We know the streets of Santos, And the loom of the lone Azores, And we found our grub in a salt-horse tub Condemned from the navy stores.
We know the track of Auckland, And the light on Sydney Head; We have crept close-hauled while the leadsman called The depths of the channel's bed.
We know the quays of Glasgow, And the river at Saigon, And have drunk our glass with a Chinese lass In a house-boat at Canton.
They pay us off in London It's "O for a spell ashore!" And again we ship for the Southern trip In a week, or hardly more.
It's "Goodbye, Sally and Sue" For it's time to get afloat, With an aching head and a straw-stuffed bed, And a knife and an oilskin coat.
Sing, "Time to leave her, Johnnie!" Sing, "Bound for the Rio Grande!" When the tug turns back, we follow her track, For a long last look at land.
Then the purple disappears, And only the blue is seen, That will send our bones down to Davy Jones And our souls to Fiddler's Green.
Notes:
From VICTORIA DAILY COLONIST, British Columbia, Canada, May 24, 1910, p. 3.
Also titled "Deep Sea Sailor" as printed in VICTORIA DAILY COLONIST, British Columbia, Canada, March 22, 1918, p. 8.