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Shanghaiing or crimping is the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. The related term press gang refers specifically to impressment practices in the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. [1]
The verb "shanghai" joined the lexicon with "crimping" and "sailor thieves" in the 1850s, possibly because Shanghai was a common destination of the ships with abducted crews. [2] [3] The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud or coercion." [4]
Crimps flourished in port cities like London and Liverpool in England and in San Francisco, [5] Portland, [6] Astoria, [7] Seattle, [8] Savannah, and Port Townsend [9] in the United States. On the West Coast of the United States, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco for shanghaiing. On the East Coast of the United States, New York had the most incidents, followed by Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. [10]
The role of crimps and the spread of the practice of shanghaiing resulted from a combination of laws, economic conditions, and the shortage of experienced sailors in England and on the American West Coast in the mid-19th century.
First, once an American sailor signed on board a vessel for a voyage, it was illegal for him to leave the ship before the voyage's end. The penalty was imprisonment, the result of federal legislation enacted in 1790 [11] (this factor was mitigated by the Maguire Act of 1895 and the White Act of 1898, and finally abolished by the Seamen's Act of 1915).
Second, the practice was driven by a shortage of labor, particularly of skilled labor on ships on the West Coast. With crews abandoning ships en masse because of the California Gold Rush, a healthy body on board the ship was a boon. [12] [13]
By 1886, San Francisco surpassed New Bedford, Massachusetts as the United States' leading whaling port. [14]
Finally, shanghaiing was made possible by the existence of boarding masters, whose job was to find crews for ships. Boarding masters were paid "by the body", and thus had a strong incentive to place as many seamen on ships as possible. [12] This pay was called "blood money", and was just one of the revenue streams available. [15] These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship. [16]
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. [15]
In some situations, the boarding master could receive the first two, three, or four months of wages of a man he shipped out. [12] Sailors were able to get an advance against their pay for an upcoming voyage to allow them to purchase clothes and equipment, but the advance wasn't paid directly to the sailor because he could simply abscond with the money. Instead, those to whom 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. [15]
Some crimps made as much as $9,500 per year (equivalent to $310,000in 2022). [17]
The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade. [18]
Some examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunko" Kelly of Portland. [18] Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some made it into print.
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.
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 on board ships. [19] However, after 1865, this began to change. In 1868, New York State started cracking down on sailors' boardinghouses. They declined in number from 169 in 1863 to 90 in 1872. [20] Then in 1871, Congress passed legislation to revoke the license of officers guilty of mistreating seamen. [20]
In 1872, Congress passed the Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 to combat crimps. [20] Under this act, a sailor had to sign on to a ship in the presence of a federal shipping commissioner. [20] The presence of a shipping commissioner was intended to ensure the sailor wasn't "forcibly or unknowingly signed on by a crimp." [20]
In 1884, the Dingley Act came into effect. This law prohibited the practice of seamen taking advances on wages. [21] It also limited the making of seamen's allotments to only close relatives. [21] However, the crimps fought back. In 1886, a loophole to the Dingley Act was created, allowing boardinghouse keepers to receive seamen's allotments. [21]
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The widespread adoption of steam-powered vessels in the world's merchant marine services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries radically altered the economics of seafaring. Without acres of canvas to be furled and unfurled, the demand for unskilled labor greatly diminished (and, by extension, crimping). The sinking of the RMS Titanic, followed by the onset of World War I (which made the high seas a much more dangerous place due to the threat of submarine attack), provided the final impetus to stamp out the practice. In 1915, Andrew Furuseth and Senator Robert M. La Follette pushed through the Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime, and finally put an end to it.
In 2005 Mystic Seaport Museum received, in database form, information gathered from a rare source, the ledger book of 19th century shipping master James Laflin. This ledger is accessible through the J. Porter Shaw Library, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. For more information, visit: The San Francisco Shanghaiers Database.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Blood money, also called bloodwit, is money or some sort of compensation paid by an offender or their family group to the family or kin group of the victim.
The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the San Francisco General Strike which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.
The Old Portland Underground, better known locally as the Shanghai tunnels, is a group of passages in Portland, Oregon, United States, mainly underneath the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood and connecting to the main business section. The tunnels connected the basements of many hotels and taverns to the waterfront of the Willamette River. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette to the basement storage areas, allowing businesses to avoid streetcar and train traffic on the streets when delivering their goods.
The Seafarers International Union or SIU is an organization of 12 autonomous labor unions of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard vessels flagged in the United States or Canada. Michael Sacco was its president from 1988 until 2023. The organization has an estimated 35,498 members and is the largest maritime labor organization in the United States. Organizers founded the union on October 14, 1938. The Seafarers International Union arose from a charter issued to the Sailors Union of the Pacific by the American Federation of Labor as a foil against loss of jobs to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its Communist Party-aligned faction.
The Seamen's Act, formally known as Act to Promote the Welfare of American Seamen in the Merchant Marine of the United States or Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, was designed to improve the safety and security of United States seamen and eliminate shanghaiing.
Harrald Olaf Lundeberg was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader.
The Sailors' Union of the Pacific (SUP), founded on March 6, 1885 in San Francisco, California, is an American labor union of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard US flag vessels.
Andrew Furuseth of Åsbygda, Hedmark, Norway was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. Furuseth was active in the formation of two influential maritime unions: the Sailors' Union of the Pacific and the International Seamen's Union, and served as the executive of both for decades.
The International Seamen's Union (ISU) was an American maritime trade union which operated from 1892 until 1937. In its last few years, the union effectively split into the National Maritime Union and Seafarer's International Union.
The maritime history of the United States is a broad theme within the history of the United States. As an academic subject, it crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding the United States' relationship with the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. The focus is on merchant shipping, and the financing and manning of the ships. A merchant marine owned at home is not essential to an extensive foreign commerce. In fact, it may be cheaper to hire other nations to handle the carrying trade than to participate in it directly. On the other hand, there are certain advantages, particularly during time of war, which may warrant an aggressive government encouragement to the maintenance of a merchant marine.
The Maguire Act of 1895 is a United States Federal statute that abolished the practice of imprisoning sailors who deserted from coastwise vessels. The act was sponsored by representative James G. Maguire of San Francisco, California.
The White Act of 1898, formally known as An Act To amend the laws relating to American seamen, for the protection of such seamen, and to promote commerce, is a United States Federal statute governing mariners in the United States Merchant Marine.
The Dingley Act of 1884 was a United States law introduced by U.S. Representative Nelson Dingley, Jr. of Maine dealing with American mariners serving in the United States Merchant Marine.
The Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 was a United States law dealing with American mariners serving in the United States Merchant Marine.
The maritime history of the United States (1800–1899) saw an expansion of naval activity.
The United States merchant marine forces matured during the maritime history of the United States (1900–1999).
James Kelly, better known as "Shanghai" Kelly, was an American crimp of the 19th century who kidnapped men and forced them to work on ships. The terms "crimping" and "shanghaiing" are used to describe this type of work. Kelly wore a red beard and had a fiery temper to match. A legendary figure in San Francisco history, Kelly was known for his gift of supplying or shanghaiing men to understaffed ships.
Joseph "Bunko" Kelly was an English hotelier of the 19th century who kidnapped men and sold them to work on ships. The terms "Shanghaiing" and "crimping" are used to describe this type of activity. By his own account, he Shanghaied about 2,000 men and women during his 15-year career, beginning in 1879.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada; on the East Coast, the dominant union is the International Longshoremen's Association. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013.
A Sailortown is a district in seaports that catered to transient seafarers. These districts frequently contained boarding houses, public houses, brothels, tattoo parlours, print shops, shops selling nautical equipment, and religious institutions offering aid to seamen; usually there was also a police station, a magistrate's court and a shipping office. Because it took several days, in the past, to unload ships, crews would spend this time in sailortown. These were "generic locations—international everyplaces existing in nearly every port." Cecily Fox Smith wrote that 'dockland, strictly speaking, is of no country—or rather it is of all countries'". Sailortowns were places where local people, immigrants, social and religious reformers, and transitory sailors met.
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