More info and a copy of Creighton's text is here:

http://www.shanty.org.uk/archive_songs/john-kanaka.html

I don't have a copy of Minstrelsy of Maine handy, so I can't absolutely confirm the website's information, but of special interest is that Creighton "said that the song never failed 'to bring down the house when sung by a few old salts that know how to get the funny yodel-like notes that were common in the good old times of the down-east square-rigger.'"

Those "funny yodel-like notes" must have been what Hugill called "hitches."

Apparently Eckstorm and Smyth's source was not the elder Creighton but one of his sons, born after 1850. According to the website, E & S collected the song in 1925