Please stop trying to force it into something ship-related! Besides the fact that you have "chanty = ship" in mind, there is no reason this has to be any Shippy McShip thing.

It's established that this was limited American slang, evoking real or imagined Black American speech, for a locomotive, that the "bullgine" was a popular trope in the language of minstrel songs and skits, and that such language freely permeated texts of chanties.

_The New Negro Forget-Me-Not Songster_ (1859), pg. 62:

CLAR DE TRACK. [1840s]
Tune--Dan Tucker. [PARODY]
            By JAMES KIERMAN.
Oh hears a song that never was sung,
By any nigger old or young,
An if you all will listen to me,
I'll sing about some niggers that's free.

Šo clar de track, de bullgine's coming.
Clar de track, de bullgine's coming,
Clar de track, de bullgine's coming,
See de niggers how dey're running.

Dh Dandy Jim an my Aunt Sally,
Both live down in Shinbone alley,
Lucy Neal an Mr. Brown,
Lives in a house that's out ob town.

So clar de track, &c.

Misses Tucker and ole Joe,
To take a ride one day did go;
And Daniel Tucker thought he'd shine,
Along wid de gal in de cabbage line.

So clar de track, &c.

Do yaller sun has jis gone down,
An Pompy Smash is here in town:
Lably Dinah's in a trance,
And Jim Crow 's singing the Boatman Danca

So clar de track, &c.
[ETC]