Cotton-stowing references:

1818 Savannah (Harris): "songs"
1838 Mobile Bay (Gosse): "Fire the ringo"
1844/5 Mobile Bay/New Orleans: reference to cotton-stowing with respect to chantey-men
1844 Mobile Bay (Hill): "Hie Bonnie Laddie"
1845 New Orleans (Erskine): "Fire Maringo," "Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie"
1845-1852 Mobile Bay (Nordhoff): "Fire Maringo," "Bonnie Laddies," "Stormy...Carry him along," "Yankee Dollar...see man do,"

Of these cotton-stowing songs, Hieland Laddie had earlier turned up as a capstan song in 1835. "Stormy" and it's lyrical theme turned up:

1) In Hawai'i, 1848, as if learned from seamen:

From above -- quoting John M....

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1854 Edward T. Perkins, "Na Motu, or Reef-Rovings in the South Seas" p. 97 [ref. to 1848; Perkins had served on an American whaling ship]:

         I dug his grave with a silver spade;
                O! bullies, O!
       And I lowered him down with a golden chain,
                A hundred years ago!


P. 99: "I jumped onto a rock, swung my tarpaulin, and sung that good old song—

                'O ! storm along !
                O! my roving blades, storm along, stormy!'"
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2) In Charles White's NEW ETHIOPIAN SONG BOOK, published in 1848. It looks like this minstrel version was inspired by the cotton-stowers' "traditional" song.

So, by the late 1840s, cotton-stowers' chants were well established.