For background information, see Opie, The Singing Game (Oxford, 1985, pp. 137-140), under the title "Johnny the Sailor Boy".

"Frank Kidson was not to know that five years earlier an American anthropologist had come across children in Washington DC playing a ring game that, at the least, confirmed his claim that the song was not new:

Charlie took a notion
To go sail the sea,
And left poor Minnie a widow
Under the willow-tree.
Minnie, Minnie, nurse your baby;
Drink the wine that Charlie's sent you.

"The tune 'Johnnie Todd' was arranged by Bridget Fry and Fritz Spiegl, and became familiar to every home in Britain in the 1960s as the signature tune of the BBC television series Z Cars which is set in Liverpool." (Opie, pp. 138-39)

I haven't found a sea shanty version.

~Masato