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.