This song comes from the mid 1800s, when the Arctic right whale was already under threat of over-fishing. The earliest known source was uncovered in Gale Huntington's Songs the Whalemen Sang as a 1859 log from the Ocean Rover out of New Bedford. Huntington explains, "The goney is a bird of the albatross family. Today American sailors in the Pacific call it the "gooney bird."
Much of the recording history of this song is owed to A. L. LLoyd and company. From A. L. Lloyd's liner notes on the original Leviathan! Ballads and Songs of the Whaling Trade (1967) album:
Three emotions dominated the oldtime whalerman: exultion in the chase, a longing for home, and disgust at the conditions of his trade. This latter mood descended heaviest upon him when the fishing was poor and he became “whalesick” (like homesick, only sick for whales). The man whomade the complaint for The Weary Whaling Grounds must have been very whalesick. An odd point: The song speaks of leaving “old Greenland's icy grounds” and indicates a trip of four years' duration. The very long trips only occurred in the Southern fishery; the Greenland season was usually but a matter of months, though ships sometimes stayed all winter on the entrance to the Davis Strait so as to make an early start next season.