Stan Hugill provides the following information in Shanties from the Seven Seas:
This hoosier version probably stemmed from the Negro one. The white cotton-stowers used it for screwing the huge bales of cotton into place down in the dark holds of the cotton droghers, heaving at the levers of the screws…Once the cotton season was over these men would ship "foreign," taking these "cotton chants" with them for use at halyard and capstan, hence a new infusion of shanty blood – coloured blood – entered into the field, which perhaps up till then had been dominated mainly by Irish-shaped work-songs.