"Roll the Woodpile Down" is a pumping or capstan shanty. Hugill believed it to be a sea-going version of the southern Black song "Haul the Woodpile Down" and that perhaps being one of the many river men songs that reached deep water, it was popular right up to the end of the time of sail. It probably originated in the West Indies. One of Hugill's sources remembers it sung on board as late as 1920. It appears in the Roud Folk Song Index as #4443. It was printed in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas (1987).