Re origins, possibly.

The nearest match on broadside 'A New Song called Willy's Return' printed by Moore of Belfast in the Bodl at Harding B26 (686).

However the first verse is also the first verse of broadside ballad 'The Sailor's Lamentation', and 'Johnny and Molly's Parting' has a similar start. Nearly all oral versions use the first line as a title. Gale Huntington in 'Songs of the Whalemen' gives a version from the Journal of The Cortes, 1847. All told a fairly scarce song.