Sam Larner version

Once I was a schoolboy and I stayed at home with ease; Now I am a smacksman and I plough the raging seas. I thought I'd like seafaring life but very soon I found, It was not all plain sailing, boys, when out on the fishing ground.
ChorusCoil away the trawl-warp, boys, let's heave on the trawl, When we get our fish onboard we'll have another haul. Straightway to the capstan and merrily heave around, That's the cry in the middle of the night, "Haul the trawl, boys, haul."
Now when we get our fish onboard we have them all to gut; We put them in baskets and down the ice-locker put. We ice them round, we size them, we ice them all quite well, We ice them and keep them safely, like an oyster in his shell.
Chorus

Source: Sam Larner

Foc'sle Singers version

ChorusHaul, boys, haul, haul, boys, haul, Heave away the capstan, lads, and let's get up the trawl, When the wind is gently blowing and the ship is gently rolling, My Hannah, my Hannah, won't you be true to me.
Oh, once I was a schoolboy and I lived at home in ease, But now I am a travelling lad to plough the raging seas; I thought I'd like seafaring life, 'twas all right till I found 'Twas a damn sight worse than slavery when you got on the ground.
Chorus
For every night in winter, as regular as the clock, You put on your sou'wester and likewise your oilskin frock, And go up to the capstan lads, and ever heave away, For that's the cry in the middle of the night as well as in the day.
Chorus

Source: Paul Clayton & The Foc'sle Singers, Foc'sle Songs and Shanties

The Foc'sle Singers' liner notes describe this as a British foc'sle song learned from a BBC recording of a traditional English singer.

A smacksman was a fisherman who worked aboard a smack, a type of single-masted gaff-rigged sailing vessel used for coastal and inshore trawling. Smacks were the workhorse of the east coast English fishing industry, particularly in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, through the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. The men who crewed them trawled the North Sea grounds, hauling the trawl net up from the seabed by capstan, gutting and icing the catch onboard, and working through the night as readily as the day.

This song is a first-person account of that life, from a young man who trades his schoolboy ease for the realities of the fishing ground. It is a well-documented traditional song from southeastern England, with Roud entries tracing it through more than a dozen singers across Norfolk, Suffolk, and Sussex. Sam Larner of Winterton, Norfolk, one of the great traditional singers of the twentieth century, recorded his version in 1958.