This song describes the peaceful 1896 voyages of the Lunenberg schooner Kandahar. The words come from one of the last suriving members of the Kandahar's "jolly crew", the Captain Thomas Conrad. Captain Conrad claimed it was written by the shipmate Sepley Collin during the trip, though Mr. Collin later lost his life at sea. Doerflinger took the tune down from a younger sailor, Captain Frank Risser, a fisherman from Conrad's Rose Bay, N.S.