Collected (and set with a piano accompaniment) by Ralph Vaughan Williams, from the collection Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties. For solo voice with Piano accompaniment. First sung to R. Vaughan Williams by James 'Duggie' Carter, a King's Lynn fisherman, the song tells the story of the death of a young boy aboard a ship. According to comments from RVW himself, The ballad was probably called forth by a particularly brutal case of ill treatment, similiar to that narrated in it, which occurred some twenty or thirty years ago.