Great sleuthing, Wm. It's an enlightening desription, and the date (1865) makes this the earliest known specific performance.

Enlightening too (and unique) is the "Tommy's Gone to Hilo" theme of the verses.

Moreover, chanteying aboard a vessel of the U.S. Navy has not otherwise been recorded. The reason for its singing here may be that the ship in question, the wooden screw-steamer "Mary Sanford," was a transport and not a ship of the line. Another valuable insight.

Just before the Civil War, John Robinson went to sea at the age of fourteen. Nearly sixty years later he recalled these verses in "The Bellman" of July 21, 1917:

Oh, poor Reuben Ranso,
Ranso, boys, Ranso,
Oh, poor Reuben Ranso,
Ranso, boys, Ranso.

Ranso was no sailor.
He shipped on board a whaler.
He could not do his duty.
They took him to the gangway,
And gave him five and forty.

Robinson also wrote that he'd learned a "good many chanties which I have never forgotten" on his first voyage from Will Halpin, an elderly shellback (and the earliest known chanteyman) who'd been on the ocean since about 1800.

Unfortunately Robinson doesn't say which chanteys. Nor, maddeningly, does he give any hint that Halpin ever mentioned whether chanteying had existed before ca1830..