Gibb Sahib wrote:

I may regret saying this in the future, but I think this very well could be the book.

If nothing else, you're making me feel better about my intensive search to try to identify the book and eventually pointing to Kennard. :-)

[ ... ]

My mind talks back to the "against" arguments by rationalizing: There are probably errors in Tommy Wood's memory, so some elements of his description are likely red herrings. He could be hallucinating that the illustrations in the book were of ships, or not being totally genuine about the degree to which the poem was transformed to become "Wellerman." This is not a slight to Tommy Wood-- I'd expect my own recollection after so many years to be even more sketchy.

Yes. I don't remember anything from that long ago. :-) We underestimate the power of human forgetfulness. :-)

I'm more of a hopeless skeptic as opposed to a hopeless romantic.

A wise position, I think.

Even if Kennard is the book, though, we're left with problems. We have Wood's account, but we also have Colquhoun's attribution to "Woods." If Tommy Wood found and rewrote the text, then where does Colquhoun's text come from, and why are they so similar?

And there's still the problem that the "Wellerman" tune, whatever you may think about its source, is a strong tune, and all of Colquhoun's admitted compositions are much weaker. Frankly, when "The Lightning Tree" turned up, I thought the answer was that Colquhoun (or Woods) borrowed that. But now we know that's not true. So we're left with the mystery of Colquhoun making up one good tune and not putting his name on it when he did put his name on so many bad ones. That's not insurmountable, because humans are crazy :-), but it's an oddity.