In 1851, alluvial gold was discovered at Ballerat, 115 km north-west of Melbourne. Tens of thousands flocked to the diggings. Two tons of gold was banked every week.

In order to carry these miners, and supplies for them, more efficiently, and to get the gold back to England faster, clippers, bigger, narrower sailing ships with more sails, were brought into service, sailing the great circle route that used the westerly gales far south of the Indian Ocean to reach Melbourne harbour, and the same westerlies south of the Pacific Ocean to return to England about 6 months after they left, having gone around the world and home again.

British steam ships had been making ocean voyages since the 1830s. But they needed 40 tons of coal a day, and could not carry enough to reach Australia or New Zealand.

Early sailing ships carring passengers to New Zealand took 100-130 days to sail from England to New Zealand. Conditions on them were cramped and unhygenic and many passengers died, especially children.

But clipper ships in the 1860s did the trip to New Zealand in 80-100 days. And the ships were big, healthy and comfortable. The 1860s was the heyday of the clipper ships on the round-the world-and-home-again route.

William Allingham (b. 1824, d. 1889) was born and raised in the port of Ballyshannon, in Galway Bay, Ireland, and as a young customs officer, he boarded sailing ships that had just returned from year-long round-the-world voyages.

He first published this poem in the Tyrone Constitution, an Irish newspaper, in 1866, when he was 22 years old.

We've courted gay Peruvian girls and French girls and Chinese Spanish girls and Dutch girls and dainty Japanese To far Australia and Honolulu where the Hawaiian maidens play A different girl in every port for that's the sailor's way O shining is the north star as it hangs off our starboard bow We're homeward bound for Liverpool town and our hearts are in it now for we've crossed the line and the gulf stream, been round by Table Bay Around the Horn and home again, for that's the sailor's way And it's goodbye to Deirdre, we're off to sea once more Sailor Jack always comes back to the gals he do adore He'll cross the line and the gulf stream, go round by Table Bay Around the Horn and home again for that's the sailor's way In calm or storm or rain or shine the shellback doesn't mind On the ocean swell he works like hell for the gal he's left behind He beats it north, he runs far south, he doesn't get much pay He's always on a losing game, for that's the sailor's way We'll get paid off in Liverpool and go out on a spree We'll eat and drink and have some fun and forget the bloody sea And Jack will go with his sweet Marie and Pat with his 'Cushla play But I'll get drunk and turn in me bunk for that's the sailor's way And it's goodbye to Maggie, we're off to sea once more Sailor Jack always comes back to the gals he do adore He'll cross the line and the gulf stream, go round by Table Bay Around the Horn and home again for that's the sailor's way

By 1870, steam ships could travel faster for longer distances, thanks to hgher boiler pressures, compound steam engines and stronger, lighter hull designs. They needed only 20 tonnes of coal to travel 450 km in one day.

And the Suez canal had opened for steamships, cutting 7000 km off the trip around the bottom of Africa. The steam ships returned to England the same Suez route. The days of the Roaring Forties and Cape Horn were coming to an end.

There is a version from Nova Scotia, collected by William Doerflinger in 1930, set to the tune of the epic slave ship chanty The Flying Cloud. It is in his 1951 songbook, Shantymen and Shantyboys.

Topsail men moved to the bigger, slower, steel-hulled windjammer cargo vessels, and then to smaller coastal schooners.

Waterfront journalist James Cowan collected this song telling of romantic voyages long ago. He published it in his The Bush Poet article in 'The Canterbury Times', 24 September 1913.

Yankees have become Maoris, and yellow girls under tropical palm trees have become part-European girls in New Zealand's Northland.

In his same 1913 Canterbury Times article, Cowan also mentioned a version of this song heard on coastal vessels in the Auckland region. It had these variant lines.

In the 1950s Neil Colquhoun recorded this song, using Cowan's words published in 1913, and a tune by Wellington folkie Jim Delahunty. It was published in "Songs of a Young Country" in 1965, and you can see and hear a few differences from today's rendering of it.

Their tune was borrowed from Clube Da Esquina No. 2 by Milton Nascimento, and their words were half-remembered by Jon Boden from a shanty album he had listened to a decade previously.