Our cook he is a very dirty man. Ch: Sail away for the Rio Grande! He cooks the food as dirty as he can. Ch: Sail away for the Rio Grande. He stirred the tea with the end of a rope. And in the bread we found a big piece of soap. Every sailor got his fair peck of dirt. He boiled the cap'n's puddin' in the tail of his shirt.

Charles Finger, in Sailor Chanties and Cowboy Songs, provides the following:

In the sealing outfits in the Antarctic, there was a chantie which was more properly a fo’c’sle song known as the “Dirty Cook”. I have heard eight or ten men sing it for an hour or more with keenest delight, each adding his line, each mind busy with a couplet to follow while roaring the chorus. It was a song peculiar to the Chilean seaboard I think…

The ship’s cook of course would join in heartily, quite unconscious of any incongruity between conduct and profession.