This is a great song you found, LEJ. I ordered the Pint & Dale CD, and I found two more versions to post:

From Colcord:

Notes:

The next is one of a large crop of "career" ballads, in which the advantages are set forth of being a soldier, sailor, farmer, lumberman, or whatever; and in which the girls are exhorted to have nothing to do with men who follow another trade This eulogy of the sailor's life comes from Eckstorm and Smyth's Minstrelsy of Maine.
I do not know the tune to which this particular version was sung; but it was doubtless a variant of the original ballad from which the whole flock of "career" songs sprang.

SAILORS' "COME-ALL-YE"
(By permission of Mrs. Phillips Barry)

Come all ye pretty fair maids, O if ye did but know
The dangers and the hardships that sailors undergo,
You'd have a better regard for them than ever you had before
And hate the lazy landsman, that's always on the shore.

They are always with the pretty girls, telling to them fine tales, Concerning all the hard day's work that's done in their cornfields;
'Tis pulling of the weeds and grass, 'tis all that they do know,
While we, like jovial seamen, boys, go plow the ocean through.

Soon as the sun it does go down, aside they'll throw their plow,
Saying, "Our day's work's done, me boys, no more we will do now."
Soon as the night is dark as pitch, 'tis into bed they'll crawl,
While we, like jovial seamen, boys, stand many a bitter squall.

Soon as eight o'clock it does come on, the winds begin to blow,
Our Captain he commands us all: "All hands from there below!
All hands from there below, my boys, stand by our ship to guard!
Aloft, aloft, me lively lads, send down th' t'gannle yard!"

The seas they run full mountains high and toss us up and down,
In the midst of all these dangers we are 'fraid our ship will drown;
But don't let that discourage us, boys, we'll see the girls again,
In spite of all America, we'll cross the raging main.

'We'll sail to all parts of the world that ever yet was known,
We'll bring back gold and silver, 'tis when we do return;
We'll make our country flourish, me boys, more'n ever it did before,
And when our money's all spent and gone, we'll cross the seas for more.


from Joanna C. Colcord, Songs of American Sailormen (Norton, 1924, 1938), p. 137