Fire Down Below
(Fire! Fire!)
ChorusFire! Fire! Fire down below. It's fetch a bucket of water, girls, There's fire down below!There is fire in the fore-top, fire in the main, Fire in the windlass and fire in the chain. There is fire in the fore-peak, fire down below, Fire in the chain-plates, the bosun didn't know. There is fire up aloft, there's fire down below, Fire in the galley, the cook he didn't know.
James H. Williams pumping version
(Suck-o! unship the brakes.)
Source: James H. Williams, "The Sailor's Chanties," The Independent, July 8, 1909
The joke, in Colcord’s (Roll and Go) variant, lay in choosing non-flammable portions of the ship in which to locate his imaginary fire (except, of course, the cook’s galley— the kitchen always had its cooking fire).
James H. Williams, a Black American seaman who wrote about life before the mast, printed a pumping version in The Independent of July 8, 1909. The verses are the familiar ones, but each pair of lines is broken by a different chorus, “To me weigh, heigh, heigh, heigh, ho!” and “Sing, fire down below!” The song ends with “Suck-o! unship the brakes,” the cry when the pumps draw air and the hold is dry. Williams’s set gives a fifth verse, too, in which the mate is found drunk in his bunk.