The literal meaning of the lyrics is about going down to a harbour, past a watermelon stand to find a boat called Martha's Foolish Ginger (sounds like a reference to a person's cat). Then talking with someone (a lober ir a friend?), on the boat till quite late at night, while the boat is saying out past the harbour mouth.
If the harbour lights are half a mile inland is a weird chorus- because then they wouldn't be at the harbour and she wouldn't have found her boat... So they couldn't be harbour lights in that case.
The literal meaning of the lyrics is about going down to a harbour, past a watermelon stand to find a boat called Martha's Foolish Ginger (sounds like a reference to a person's cat). Then talking with someone (a lober ir a friend?), on the boat till quite late at night, while the boat is saying out past the harbour mouth. If the harbour lights are half a mile inland is a weird chorus- because then they wouldn't be at the harbour and she wouldn't have found her boat... So they couldn't be harbour lights in that case.