Thank you, Reddit TIL, for pointing me to this Wikipedia Page about the author of “Amazing Grace”:
[…] a Christian hymn published in 1779, with words written by the English poet and Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725–1807).
While aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton gained notoriety for being one of the most profane men the captain had ever met. In a culture where sailors commonly used oaths and swore, Newton was admonished several times for not only using the worst words the captain had ever heard, but creating new ones to exceed the limits of verbal debauchery.
I can’t help but wonder what those words were. Don’t they deserve to be preserved for posterity as well? I am sure some of them had to do with the Captain’s posterior at the very least!