Blow the Man Down is a song that I grew up with and could often be heard on radio in the late 1940's when I became aware of it. In my memory of those times, it would be sung by some arty chamber music type baritone accompanied by a delicate tinkling pianist, their combined efforts resulting in definitely non-nautical performance as far removed from life-at-sea as possible. It may sound strange to people outside RN circles that such a song was never sung in the Royal Navy and certainly not in my time. It was only when getting my teeth into folk-music that I found it wasn't such a bad song after all.
The version I sing is the first choice of two lyrics given by W.B. Whall, Master Mariner in one of my most prized songbooks Sea Songs Ships and Shanties. He declares that the shanty comes from the old Atlantic sailing packet ships.
Such a fine song could not and is not excluded from Roy Palmer's The Oxford Book of Sea Songs.

Lyrics