Gibb Sahib wrote (quoting several messages):

I now have a (borrowed) copy of _First White Boy_ (1998 edition; first published 1939).

No obvious Weller'sman song inside.

Thanks for doing that work.

I'm not really surprised. I did a lot of research and concluded that this was the only book that could possibly contain a text of "Wellerman" from a contemporary source, but that's not proof that any such book existed. :-) Wood never said that the book he saw dated back to the Weller period; only that it was old. I observe that, as I had concluded based on all the other books, it does have some songs of the period.

Here's John's FB post (fingers crossed that the link works).... He implied in the comments that this is the 1972 edition (?)."

Yes, that's the second edition, from 1972. (The so-called first edition wasn't really a published book, and didn't have typeset music.) FWIW, the third edition is a much more attractive volume, re-typeset and with additional material, but the arrangement of the song is the same. That edition has an image of a whale being hunted at the top of the page with "Wellerman" on it.

I don't think the fact that First White Boy doesn't contain shanties is very relevant. I don't know what Colquhoun thought a shanty was, but clearly "Wellerman" wasn't a working shanty; at best, it might have been sung in the forecastle.

Not in response to your comments, but to others, it's worth reviewing what Mike Harding quoted Tommy Wood as saying (above, under Nov. 13, 2022): "I came across the poem in a book on NZ sailors and as a folk singer in those days was collecting songs to sing at the clubs. I had mentioned it to Neil Colquhoun, then a fellow club member, who knew about it and hummed a rough guide to the tune....unfortunately I have not got the book anymore. All I can remember was stories connected to whaling, exploring NZ and immigration ships, containing personal letters of life on board these ships, including poems.... it was fairly old then...." Note that Wood did not claim it as a children's or a school book. Kennard would meet Wood's description, I think, though it isn't the book. The mystery of what book Wood saw clearly remains.

I did make an error above, when I talked about John Roberts playing "Wellerman" on banjo. That was a different song. (I never heard him actually do it, so it didn't sink in.)