Three fools go to sea in a bowl, part of the old "Wise Men of Gotham" tradition of tales about a village of exaggerated simpletons. The joke lands in the last line, where the rhyme runs out along with the story. Better appreciated once a child can follow a punchline.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer.
About this rhyme
Gotham is a real village in Nottinghamshire; the 'wise men' legend has its villagers feigning idiocy to head off a royal visit. · Washington Irving named New York 'Gotham' in the Salmagundi papers (1807), deliberately borrowing the foolish-village joke.
Gotham is a real village in Nottinghamshire, home to an old English joke-tradition about men who acted daft on purpose, the 'wise men of Gotham'. This rhyme is one of the jokes: three of them go to sea in a bowl, and the last line shrugs at what might have happened if it had held together.
The same Gotham later gave New York its nickname.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition