Thanks, Steve. The text rather falls flat on the printed page, but I suppose a performer with a knack at doing funny voices could have made something of it. In this case, would it be fair to see the burlesque as a kind of last recycling of the old Gosport ballad, squeezing some humour out of a once serious song that was now well out of date, while the "Cruel Ship's Carpenter" took over in the oral tradition as the serious version of the story?

I'd never come across the song with the shrimps before, but I've just found "The Lover's Lament for her Sailor" at the Bodleian broadside ballads site, and followed a handy cross reference there to "The Sorrowful Ladies Complaint" at Santa Barbara. It looks to me as if even the shrimpless 17th C. version was already asking for a burlesque performance -- but as you say, tastes change.