Other singers for whom "Sailor (Your Home is the Sea)" brought success as rendered in various languages include: Scandinavian singers Thory Bernhards and Towa Carson "Sjöman" (Swedish) and Jan Høiland "Sjömann" (Norwegian); Caterina Valente, who had a Flemish hit with "Zeeman (Je verlangen is de zee)"( Dutch;) a 1981 hit in the Netherlands for Ciska Peters (nl); and Virginia Lee (af) whose "Seeman" (Afrikaans) was a successful local cover in South Africa.
Prior to "Seemann (Deine Heimat ist das Meer)", Viennese singer Lolita had based her career on schlager numbers with Latin or Polynesian themes.
Making her recording debut in 1957, Lolita had had four Top 20 hits on the German charts notably with "Der Weiße Mond Von Maratonga" (number 2, 1957).
To increase the appeal of "Seemann..." for the US market, a section spoken in English by Maureen René (de) was overdubbed on to the track at Polydor Studio Hamburg (Rahlstedt).
For writing the new English recitation the name of Alan Holt—a pseudonym for label head David Kapp—was listed with Werner Scharfenberger and Fini Busch in the songwriting credits for the modified version of "Seemann..., which was re-titled "Sailor (Your Home is On the Sea)" and issued in the US in September 1961.
The strong US response to "Sailor..." has been attributed to the then-current immense US media interest in Germany due to the political situation in Berlin and also Elvis Presley's serving in the US Army's Third Armored Division along the East-West German border.
Lolita's "Seemann..." had its most intense chart impact in Norway where it was number one for nine weeks in the spring of 1961 with sales of 50,000 units recognized in October 1961 with the awarding of a Gold Disc.
Lolita can be heard singing "Seemann..." on the soundtrack of the film Schick Deine Frau nicht nach Italien (de) which premiered 22 September 1960.
[9] In 1984, "99 Luftballons" by the group Nena reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, ousting Lolita's "Seemann..." as the highest charting US hit sung in German.
His version, recorded 29 October 1965 in Nashville, was issued in January 1966 both as the B-side of his single "Those Snowy Blowy Glowy Days of Winter" and on Helms' album I'm the Man.
In 1981 Ciska Peters (nl) remade the song as "Zeeman, je verlangen is de zee"; it reached number nineteen on the Netherlands hit parade.
Released on 15 September 2015, this version, which set the song to a dance-pop beat, was promoted with a video—showing de Roo singing on a sandbar and aboard a clipper moored at the Delfzijl quay—which regularly aired on the Dutch music channels Sterren.nl and TV Oranje facilitating a two-week tenure for the track on the Single Top 100, ranking at number ninety-four in September 2009 and at number ninety-eight on 3 October 2009.
The Swedish lyrics being the work of Åke Gerhard whose composition "Ann-Caroline", first sung by Bernhards, had coincidentally developed into "Lay Down Your Arms" the career record of Anne Shelton who had a Top Ten UK hit with "Sailor".
"Seemann..." has also been rendered in Croatian: "Mornar" by Anica Zubović (hr) (1968), and also in Italian: "Sailor (La tua casa e' il mare)" by Lucia Altieri (it) (1962).