Captain Bunker here may refer to Eber Bunker or his progeny, though the original singer evidently identified him with a captain who died "not long ago" at Snug Harbor, Staten Island, New York. Indeed, the song and its references to Capt. Bunker date back to at least 1846 with John Ross Browne's Etchings of a Whaling Cruise.

Doerflinger gives a concise, complete version attributed to James H. William with a chorus:

I dey, O, sing laddie, O, laddie, I dey