The Voice of the People; Cod Banging sung by Bob Hart, Snape, Suffolk, 1972. Roud 1747.

A song which appears to be unique to Bob - seven of the nine instances in Roud refer to his singing; the other two cite a song of the same name by Harold Smy, a bargeman from Ipswich. Although his shares Bob’s third verse, it’s actually a version of the well-known Stormy Weather Boys. In his notes to Bob’s 1973 LP, A L Lloyd confirms its rarity, adding that Sam Larner (Norfolk) knew a bit of it as The Smacksman, and pointing out that, compared to the huge number of songs about naval and merchant seamen, the English fishermen’s repertory is rather small and mostly limited to the East Anglian coast.