Cecil Sharp's Note 90 (1916)

No. 90. The Ship in Distress

For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iv, pp. 320–323). Ashton, in his Real Sailor Songs (No. 44), prints a broadside version of the words. A similar song is sung by French sailors, “Le petit Navire” (Miss Laura A. Smith’s Music of the Waters, p. 149), of which Thackeray’s “Little Billee” was a burlesque.

The tune is in the Dorian mode.