Discover

:''"Shanghaied" redirects here. See also the SpongeBob SquarePants episode. For the Charlie Chaplin film, see Shanghaied (1915 film).''
Until 1915 unfree labor was widely used aboard American merchant ships. A person conscripted to such work was said to have been 'shanghaied' when coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence were used. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as 'crimps.' The related term 'press gang' refers specifically to impressment practices in the British Royal Navy.^[1]

Contents

Background

Ending the practice

The verb "to shanghai"

Notable crimps

Notes

References

See also

External links

Background

The role of crimps and the practice of shanghaiing existed due to a combination of laws, economic conditions, and practical considerations that existed in west coast port cities like San Francisco, Portland^[2] and Astoria, Oregon,^[3] Seattle^[4] and Port Townsend, Washington^[5] in the mid-1800s.
The first factor to understand is that once a sailor signed onboard a vessel for a voyage, it was illegal for him to leave the ship before the voyage's end. The penalty was imprisonment, and this was the result of federal legislation enacted in 1790.^[6] This factor was weakened by the Maguire Act of 1895 and the White Act of 1898, before finally being eradicated by the Seamen's Act of 1915.
The second factor to consider is a shortage of labor, particularly a shortage of skilled labor on ships on the West Coast. With crews abandoning ships en masse due to the California Gold Rush , a healthy body on board the ship was a boon, and an actual able seaman was worth his weight in gold.^[7][8]
The final contributing factor was the existence of boarding masters, people whose job it was to crew ships. Boarding masters were paid "by the body," and thus had a strong incentive to place as many seamen on ships as possible. This pay was called "blood money," and was just one of the revenue streams available.^[9] These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master that uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship.
The most straightforward method for a crimp to shanghai a sailor was to render him unconscious, forge his signature on the ship's articles, and pick up his "blood money." This approach was widely used, but there were more profitable methods.
In some situations, the boarding master could receive the first two, three, or four months of wages of a man he shipped out. How this was accomplished requires some explanation. Sailors were able to get an advance against their pay for an upcoming voyage. The purpose was to allow them to purchase clothes and equipment. However, the advance wasn't paid directly to the sailor, because he could simply abscond with the money. Instead, those to which money was owed could claim it directly from the ship's captain. An enterprising crimp, already dealing with a seaman, could supplement his income by supplying goods and services to the seaman at an inflated price, and collecting the debt from the sailor's captain.
Some crimps made as much as $9,500 per year in 1890s dollars, equivalent to about $200,000 in 2006 dollars.
The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade.^[10] The keepers of boardinghouse for sailors supplied men on election day to go from one polling place to another, voting early and often for the candidate who would vote in their interest. In San Francisco, men like Joseph "Frenchy" Franklin and George Lewis, long time crimps, were elected to the California state legislature, an ideal spot to assure that no legislation had a negative impact on their business.
The most infamous examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland. Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some have survived into print due to their rough humor.
One example of such a story involved "Bunco" Kelly passing off a wooden Cigar store Indian as a much-needed crewman to a desperate ship's captain.
Another example of romanticized stories involves the "birthday party" Shanghai Kelly threw for himself, in order to attract enough victims to man a notorious sailing ship named the ''Reefer'' and two other ships. These romantic stories glamorizing crimping have two problems: they belie the cruelty of the practice, and they may well be historically false.

Ending the practice

Demand for manpower to keep ships sailing to Alaska and the Klondike kept crimping a real danger into the early 20th century, but the practice was finally ended by a series of legislative reforms that spanned almost 50 years.
Before 1865, maritime labor laws primarily enforced stricter discipline onboard ships.^[11] However, after 1865, this began to change. In 1868, New York State started cracking down on sailor's boardinghouses. They declined in number from 169 in 1863 to 90 in 1872. Then in 1871, Congress passed legislation to revoke license of officers guilty of mistreating seamen.^[12]
In 1872, Congress passed the ''Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872'' to combat crimps. Under this act, a sailor had to sign on to a ship in the presence of a federal shipping commissioner. The presence of a shipping commissioner was intended to ensure the sailor wasn't "forcibly or unknowingly signed on by a crimp."
In 1884, the ''Dingley Act'' came into effect. This law prohibited the practice of seamen taking advances on wages.^[13] It also limited the making of seamen's allotments to only close relatives. However, the crimps fought back. In 1886, a loophole to the ''Dingley Act'' was created, allowing boardinghouse keepers to receive seamen's allotments.
In 1915, Andrew Furuseth and Senator Robert LaFollette pushed through The Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime, and finally put an end to it. This legislation was successful primarily due to the widespread use of steampowered vessels in the world's merchant marine services. Without acres of canvas to be furled and unfurled, the demand for unskilled labor greatly diminished.

The verb "to shanghai"

The verb "to shanghai" joined the lexicon with "crimping" and "sailor thieves" in 1850s.^[14] The accepted theory of word's origin is that it comes from the Chinese city of Shanghai, a common destination of the ships with abducted crews. The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud."^[15]

Notable crimps

★ Jim "Shanghai" Kelly of San Francisco

★ Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco

★ Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland

★ "One-Eyed" Curtin

★ "Horseshoe" Brown

★ Dorothy Paupitz of San Francisco

★ Anna Gomes of San Francisco

★ Thomas Chandler

★ James Laflin

★ Chris "Blind Boss" Buckley, the Democratic Party boss of San Francisco in the 1880s

★ William T. Higgins, Republican Party boss of San Francisco in the 1870s and '80s

Notes

1. Encyclopedia Britannica:Crimp, , , , Britannica, 1911,
2. The Portland Underground: Shanghai Tunnels Michael P. Jones
3. Astoria's history along the tracks
4. Boy named Henry Short shanghaied from Seattle on December 22, 1901
5. Levy, Maxwell (d. 1931), Port Townsend's Crimper King
6. American Merchant Marine Timeline, 1789 - 2005
7. Poor Jack: The Perilous History of the Merchant Seaman, , Ronald, Hope, Greenhill Books, 2001,
8. The Lookout of the Labor Movement
9. About That Blood in the Scuppers Georgia Smith
10. Shanghaied in San Francisco Bill Pickelhaupt
11. Bauer, 1988:283.
12. Bauer, 1988:284.
13. Bauer, 1988:285.
14. Shanghai
15. For a modern definition of "shanghaied" see .

References

★ A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways, , K. Jack, Bauer, University of South Carolina, 1988,

★ Shanghai Kelly, , Samuel, Dickson, Stanford University Press, 1957,

★ Crimp Encyclopædia Britannica

★

★ Bunco Kelly, King of the Crimps, , Stewart, Holbrook, Oregon State University Press, 1992,

★ Travel: Portland—City of Kidnappers

★ Shanghaied!, , David Neal, Keller, American Heritage Magazine, 1995

★ Mission to Seafarers Timeline Alongside World Events Mission to Seafarers

★ hanghaied in San Francisco, , Bill, Pickelhaupt, UFlyblister Press, 1996,

★ The Lookout of the Labor Movement Sailors Union of the Pacific

★ Archives: Balclutha Sailors Union of the Pacific

★ Crisis at Sea: Flags-of-convenience: A Maritime Trades Department Report Sailors Union of the Pacific

★ About That Blood in the Scuppers

See also

★ Clipper

★ Impressment

★ Involuntary servitude

★ Maritime history of California

★ Maritime history of the United States

★ Shanghai tunnels

★ Barbary Coast, San Francisco, California

External links

★ Article in San Francisco News Letter February 19, 1881

★ Shanghaiing at StupidQuestion.net

★ Barbary Coast: San Francisco's Bawdy Paradise, The has section on crimping