The tune is not exactly what we're used to hearing, but recognizably close..

Sharp describes Perrey as an American, "the son of Irish immigrants. He is a typical chanty-man of the old school, having spent upwards of forty years in sailing ships. I came across him in the S.S. _St. Paul_ on my return from America in 1915."

So Perrey presumably went to sea in the 1870s.