A. L. Lloyd sang this shanty with Ewan MacColl on the 1962 album A Sailor's Garland. Others have reported that Bert was the author, but the sleeve notes read:
Like Bold Riley O, this tune (a Dorian one) was brought to Liverpool from the West Indies where a variant of it had served as a challenging stick-fight song. Among the vessels that adopted the tune as a shanty for heavy hauling were those running up the coast of Chile. Old-time sailors, who had a high regard for Valparaiso women, pronounced the name of the country to rhyme with "versatile"