My uncle sings the duckpond version, ending with "swimming against the tide". And duckponds have no tide, so this adds to the humour!
It's a shame that most of the entries on this are not provenanced with dates. Uncle Dave was born in 1926 and raised in Hull. He served in the tank regiment right at the end of WW2, and then as a military policeman in Germany until 1947. He recalls this being a song he learnt during that period, but how much further back it goes I don't know.