English translation

We set out over the Atlantic - pull home! - With a ship whose home-port was not so far from here. Ch: Haul them home! Haul them home! Haul them home and belay! Ho, be fine; ho, be right, every single man - pull home! - Set sail to the masthead, and running free we set out. Callao was our port, thence we go - pull home! - Like a louse on a tarry fist, O ho ho! The provisions exhausted, the skipper he swore - pull home! - We starved and we froze nigh unto death.

Callao, Peru, was a well known whaling, saltpeter, and guano port. Stan Hugill describes a notorious sailortown,

with its pubs and dives - the “Live and Let Live,” the “Liverpool Bar,” “Smokey Joe’s,” the “German Bar,” and “Neptune”. And its crimps and prostitutes were many - Yellow Jake, Jimmy the Pig, Serafina and Madame Gashee (both mentioned in sailor song); Liverpool Annie, who kept the “Liverpool Ship”; and Alec Townsend, the boarding-house master

Like most of Hugill’s Scandinavian shanties, it comes from Capt. Sternvall’s collection Sång Under Segel.