After trying more than a dozen times to upload this to the Lloyd shanty thread, I'll start a new one to see what happens.

Gibb,

To judge from the catalog numbers of the albums, "Haul on the Bowlin'" and "Off to Sea Once More" both appeared in the U.S. on Stinson in 1958. "Thar She Blows" (Riverside) looks to have appeared in 1956 or '57. (I don't know the basis for the online claim that the Stinson albums appeared in "1963," but since they're re-issues of older material, it doesn't matter in this case.)

I once compared the serial numbers of these two with albums whose years of issue are listed in Lawless's "Folksingers and Folksongs in America." (There may, of course, have been a considerable lapse between the recording dates and the dates of issue.)

However, the two Stinson LPs originally appeared on Topic in the UK in 1956-1957 (http://www.mustrad.org.uk/discos/dis_txt1.htm) as three EPs: "The Singing Sailor," "Row Bullies Row," and "The Black Ball Line." This Lloyd discography (http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/lloyd/records/index.html) dates the appearance of "The Singing Sailor" to 1956.

This seemingly reliable Tradition discography dates "Blow Boys Blow" to "1957": (http://clancybrothersandtommymakem.com/trad_02.htm). (My number-based estimate was 1958.)

So while a recording date of 1956 isn't rock-solid for both "Bowlin'" and "Off to Sea," the material was on sale at least in the UK during 1957.

My entirely subjective feeling is that "Thar She Blows" (with Peggy Seeger) must have been recorded after, not before, "Bowlin'" and "Off to Sea." This MacColl site dates it to 1957: (http://ewan-maccoll.info/AlbumInfo.aspx?ID=100).

1956, of course, was the year of John Huston's "Moby Dick." It was also a busy recording year for Lloyd.