Stan Hugill collected this song from the West Indies black shantyman called "Harding the Barbadian Barbarian". Harding served aboard Yankee, British, Bluenose, and West Indian vessels and was a "first-rate sailor".
In the days of sail part of making a ship's boy into an able-bodied seaman, or A.B., consisted of training him in the art of going aloft and stowing a sail. The highest sails - the royals and t'yallants (in German and Scandinavian ships, royals and bramsegels; in French ships, the coquetois (cockatoos) and perroquets) - were the boys' special concern. They had to loose them when the order came and stow them in a blow. After racing aloft they would edge out side-ways, crablike, along the two-inch footropes and pummel the sail until they had subdued it and could secure them with ties called gaskets. When the job was done satisfactorily, they would slide down the backstays to the deck.
The song has been recorded by Gordon Bok, Woods Tea Company, and others.