This humorous pumping shanty was sung to Doerflinger by Captain Patrick Tayleur, who believed the bark Campanero sailed from Baltimore in the Brazilian coffee trade.
Doerflinger explains that
the singer takes the usual liberty with the tempo all the way through the song. In singing this song, the one thing to remember is not to "jam" the words in if they don't seem to fit- simply add another beat in the measure.
Tayleur's additional unrecorded verses described how the narrator joined up with the bark in New York. Robert Frothingham gives an excerpt in Adventure Magazine, 1922