...the likelihood that he or anybody else learned the line "WSWDWTCD?" from some ancient salt in the 1940s or '50s, who had sung it at sea, seems to me to be practically zero.

I agree, and I think this also supports GregB's reasoning. What I was curious about was why you got the impression that Brand may have got the verse from a non-Old Salt, i.e. rather than simply making it up himself.

Your impressions are worth a lot here, Lighter -- they may be some of the best info to be had, anywhere. I don't have a sense of whether it was Brand's style to be coy or not. In other words, did he seem like someone who was likely to omit details (i.e. so as to tacitly let audiences form impressions), or was he the type to be explicit about sources (even if that took away some of the glamour!)?

On GregB's comment:

Although of course there are exceptions, I think your reasoning is sound. However, there is a lot of time, even before the mid century Revival, during which non-sailor verses could have been created and circulated orally. Evidence from my recent investigations suggests that "Drunken Sailor" was already circulating as song among laymen by the turn of the 2oth century. Here's the current blurb from the Wiki (in progress...ignore the bad prose):

"Drunken Sailor" began its life as a popular song on land at least as early as the 1900s, by which time it had been adopted as repertoire for glee singing at Eton College.[13][14] Elsewhere in England, by the 1910s, men had begun to sing it regularly at gatherings of the Savage Club of London.[15]

The song became popular on land in America as well. A catalogue of "folk-songs" from the Midwest included it in 1915, where it was said to be sung while dancing "a sort of reel."[16] More evidence of lands-folk's increasing familiarity with "Drunken Sailor" comes in the recording of a "Drunken Sailor Medley" (ca.1923) by U.S. Old Time fiddler John Baltzell. Evidently the tune's shared affinities with Anglo-Irish-American dance tunes helped it to become readapted as such, as Baltzell included it among a set of reels.

Bullen in the one who said he heard it *best* sung at the Savage Club, and it may have been those gents or earlier public school kids that made up risque verses, I suppose.