The following remembrance of life on the Liverpool docks ca.1830, appears to quote [DRUNKEN SAILOR].

1855         Roberts, Edwin F. "Dock-side; Or, Liverpool Twenty-five Years Ago: A Local Sketch." _The United Service Magazine_ 2(319) (June 1855) 240-8.

Pg. 248
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On either side a dock-gateman is winding open the enormous watergates. The tide is up to the level of that held in the dock; and, being high water, vessels are now coming in and going out. Here is one entering the gut outward-bound, heavily laden, and looking very trim and compact. Half a dozen men and a gigantic negro are heaving away at the capstan. The topsails are hanging in the brails. As yet she is short-handed, for the whole of the crew are not aboard; but here they come, drunk and sober, leaping and tumbling upon the decks. Some go below to sleep their orgies out, and some aloft and hither and thither—and the vessel's way is quickened.
She is not yet out of the dock gates, and till then the gateman acts as a sort of pilot to her—giving directions and orders in the quick, short, stern tone which is the habit of seamen, from the fact that whatever is to be done must be done instantaneously, at once, without debate or dispute.
"Ship ahoy!" the gateman sings out, while, with a merry tramp and an enlivening song, the capstan bars go round—with some such burthen as this:

"Shove him in the long-boat till he gets sober."
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