We now see clearly that improvisation and variation in chantey performances, even in this basically narrative song, were more common than most people think - including people like me and an actual chantey man like Stanton King.

But many singers would mostly stick to a congenial text. Linscott's Captain Smith had also sung for James M. Carpenter about ten years before. Though the later one improves on one or two lines, Smith's two sets of mainstream lyrics are essentially the same.