This is another tune Doerflinger took down from Captain Henry E. Burke of Toronto, Ontario, and formerly Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. The tune is in the Dorian mode, a five-tone scale especially popular in folk airs from Britain and Ireland. Here's what Doerflinger had to write about the origins of the song:
The refrain is no doubt from the Civil War song "The Seven Days' Fight" ("Air-'Louisiana Lowlands'"), for which see The Arkansas Traveller's Songster (New York, Dick and Fitzgerald, 1864), p. 14. For "Louisiana Lowlands," see Minstrel Songs, Old and New (Boston, 1882), p. 72; the tune, however, is not related to Captain Burke's tune to "The Big Five Gallon Jar." His own title was "Cal and Jack, the Shanghaiers."
Jack Jennings was evidently a real, peg-legged, owner of a grog shop in Liverpool in the 1890s. Doerflinger quotes Burke:
His wife's name was Caroline. They were crimps. The large shipping ports had plenty of these characters in the palmy days of the square-rigged windjammer. Their victims was poor, unfortunate Jack, whom they lured into their dens... But the old, easy-going sailor thought these places were gay resorts... After having a few drinks, they knew no more. When they came to their senses, they found themselves in the fo'c'sle of a ship bound around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, to Australia, China, or San Francisco - shanhaied. And their worldly belongings consisted of the clothes they had on, a pound of tobacco, a belt, sheath and knife. Those were the days when sailors were made and the crimps reaped their harvest.
The song was adapted to other crimps, including Larry Meagher of New York.
In Liverpool there liv'd a man, Jack Jennings was his name
And in the days of square-rigged sail, he played the shanghai game.
His wife's name was Caroline, sailors knew from near and far;
And when she played the shanghai game she used his big stone jar.
In the old Virginia lowlands, lowlands low,
In the old Virginia lowlands low!
There were drunkards in the corner and bummers at the bar,
And Caroline was supplying them with a big five-gallon jar.
Lines missing
Said old Jack to old Caroline, "I'll tell you what we'll do.
There's a ship lying down to McKinnon's Wharf; I think she wants a crew.
We'll go down around the corners to get some drunken tars.
We'll shanghai them away out of Liverpool Bay with a big five-gallon jar!"
So Jack and Cal, they worked their game when the ships signed on their tars.
Skys'l Jack and Pete and Bowline Bill helped to judge old Cal's five-gallon jar.
Now we'll bid adieu to Cal and Jack and set our sails for ports afar.
Dear Shanghai Cal, we'll call come back, and sample Jack's five gallon jar.