Smedberg mentions the frigate Congress, without clearly identifying it as the ship in the song.

"The New World" (Dec. 23, 1843), p. 158, identifies Peirce specifically as "Professor of Mathematics" on the Congress.

In fact, the untitled song is followed by an extended, untitled poem in heroic couplets indicting an unnamed captain for the death, after a flogging, of a seaman named Patterson. The poem is signed with the pseudonym "Congress," and it seems likely that both poem and song were written by Peirce.

In any event, the song-maker's choice of the "Derry Down" tune implies that the tune was very familiar in the U.S. around 1840.
Cf. its use just a few years later in "Bucking and Gagging."

Launched in 1841, the Congress was destroyed in 1862 by the ironclad Merrimac.