English translation

Curaçao, I've seen you so many times, And all your crafty tricks, I dislike them, And all your crafty tricks, I dislike them, Therefore I'm going to depart to where I came from. Last night I went, with haste, all through Lord's Street, They said: "My dear sailor, come sit down here a while, And drink a glass with us and smoke a pipe of tobacco." But with all their crafty tricks, your money goes from your pocket. A kiss can make you stay the whole night long, Then you don't hear the bawling of your officer, Thus we go roaming, as drunk as pigs, The ship lays at the moorings, aboard her we have to be. Loose the hawser, the fore and aft lines, And if you wish to see us, we go back to Holland, Where life is better with a real woman, I give you, therefore, all the little girls of the land of Curaçao. Loose the hawser, the fore and aft lines, We're not to be held fast anymore, we go to Holland, Where life is better with your own wife, Damn all the whores of Curaçao.

Curaçao, perhaps now best known as the eponymous source of the orange-flavored liqueur, has been at times a great oil port of the Dutch Antilles and a well-known port-o’-call for Dutch West Indiamen. From Stan Hugill:

Limestone was an early cargo which drew other countries’ ships as well to those isolated islands. Welsh schooners sailed there so often that it was said there was a white trail across the Atlantic, known to seamen as “The Milky Way.” This white track was caused by the milky limestone water pumped out from the bilges of such ships. Dutch sailors have known for years the ladies of easy virtue of the once infamous street called Heren Straatje, in the port of Willemstad, Curaçao. The sailor in this song has come to know the crafty wiles of the local prostitutes, but then again he prefers their temporary and doubtful company to life on shipboard with the harassing mates bawlings unceasingly in his ears. However, by the last verse - when the ship is loaded and ready to leave - he knows he’s homeward bound and will soon be in the arms of his wife, whose embraces he praises when compared to the murky charms of the shady ladies of Curaçao.