It is definitely all in "Singing the Fishing" - and I don't think any of it was sung or published earlier. As in many of the radio ballad songs, this one is split up by bit's of dialogue. There are several variations to some of the lyrics, but I think these come from other singers. The main one is:

Now you're up on deck, you're a fisherman
And you're learning all about seafaring
For your education scraps of navigation

instead of MacColl's original:

Now you're up on deck, you're a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellows

The song also has a sort of prologue and epilogue in the radio ballad:

With our nets and gear we're faring
On the wild and wasteful ocean.
It's there on the deep that that we earn our bread
(Or DT version: Its there that we hunt and we earn our bread)
As we hunt the bonny shoals of herring

Night and Day we're daring
Come summer's storm or winter's galing
We're sweating and cold, growing up, growing old, and dying
As we hunt the bonny shoals of herring.


I was interested in Peggy's comment that the song is also now known as 'The Shores of Erin'. As I've mentioned in another thread I was plagued at one club by an old guy who kept asking me to "Sing that song about sailing round the Irish coast". I repeatedly told him that I knew no such song, but he insisted that he'd heard me sing it. When I did sing "Shoals of Herring" he suddenly said "That's the song - The Shores of Erin". All these years I thought it was due to poor diction on my part !