I ordered a copy of Mackinaw's Key Anacon Road CD and it arrived - with a lyrics booklet! Mackinaw was from New Brunswick.

The songwriter is Eric Leblanc. He's not in the band Mackinaw, but he is one of the musicians in the Grasse Circle Kitchen Jam, just on that track. The track is the same recording as the one on the Alexander Keiths CD.

Here's a site about Eric Leblanc:
http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=83855

There were a few corrections in the lyrics, so I'm posting them again with the changes:

CAPTAIN TOM O'BRIEN
(Eric Leblanc)

"Are you brave or are you crazy?" The sea asked Tom O'Brien
"Tend to your tides", the captain said, "I'm not afraid of dyin'"
His ship was born in River John, The William H. McNeill
800 tons would rest upon the hardwood of her keel      

They've heard of us around the world
The sea knows where we've been
She can't claim us, she can't tame us
We're Nova Scotia men

'A two-year maiden voyage' Captain Tom began his log
The maiden he brought with him was his young bride Mary Hogg
First New York, then Liverpool, Then around the Horn they went
500 days away from home they left the Orient

Early in December her crew enlarged by one
With Mary now a mother, the Captain held his son
On Boxing Day the sky went gray in 1885
The glass was showing hurricane, They stabbed it in the eye

No rope could hold the canvas, No canvas had been made
Could hold the wind that hit the sails, A heavy sea obeyed
Her masts were snapped like matchsticks, The ocean claimed her rudder
The captain's order: "Rip the planks, we'll have to make another!"

The sea came in to take a look around the rudder post
All hands below to man the pumps or we'll never see the coast
At 6 foot six the water sits inside the lower hold
If the carpenter can't shore the leak, we'll none of us grow old

With waves as hard as cannon balls, and winds honed like a knife
The William H McNeill withstood without a loss of life
The cyclone made a barge of her, took every inch of sail
And the men went out to sea again to find another gale

They've heard of us around the world
The sea knows where we've been
She can't claim us, she can't tame us
We're Nova Scotia men

She can't take us, she can't break us
She can't claim us, she can't tame us
We're Nova Scotia Men, We're Nova Scotia Men