The following article, published in 1909, provides us with further stories about the men who were shanghaied and forced to work on board a ship.
When Shanghaiing Was Common
C.F. Merrill
“Man’s inhumanity to man” has caused many a man to take a trip to sea that he had no intention of taking; in fact, he was well on his way before he knew it. It would be almost an endless as well as a thankless task to attempt to figure up the number of men who have been shanghaied onto deep-water ships to make up the number of hands necessary to work the vessel across a trackless ocean.
The fact that the victim of a shanghai gang has never been to sea before does not enter into the reckoning at all. The chances are that he will be a good sailor before the ship reaches her destination.
Those who have taken a trip to sea in a thorough orthodox manner by paying a goodly sum of hard earned money, and also, in nine cases out of ten, exchange their dinners for the privilege of watching old ocean, usually retain, to their dying day, a vivid recollection of the feelings they then experienced when they threw up home friends and everything else, and in some cases, when it seemed that there was surely nothing else in them, the moon came up.
At such times the ordinary voyager can take to his bunk and receive what consolation he may from frequent visits of the steward and possibly the doctor. But what about the poor cuss that has been shanghaied? If he happens to be a sailor, and familiar with the workings of a ship, the fact that he comes tumbling up a narrow companionway to the deck some fine morning and finds a towering mountain of canvas over his head and the ship out of sight of land, he is not the least bit disconcerted. The chances are that he will not even ask the destination of the ship.
On the afternoon before, when he was wandering around the lower part of the city, drinking with his cronies and a few who were not his cronies, he fully expected to wake up in his little cot in some sailor boarding house the next morning, but he didn’t and that is the end of it.
The Slop Chest
He has no outfit except what he stands in as the shanghai gang are quite inconsiderate of so small a detail when they nip a victim, but that will all be regulated from the slop chest, a sea term applied to the stock of clothing, tobacco, etc., kept on board by the captain, and for which prices are charged that will use up the best part of the wages that he may have coming to him for the first two months’ work.
In fact, things are in his favor, and sometimes a smile of satisfaction will cross his weather-beaten face. He may have been ashore for some time, and in that event it is safe that he owes the sailor boardinghouse, which has been keeping him after his money is gone, quite a little amount, which amount he will never have to pay now.
If he had shipped in the regular way and signed “articles,” the amount due the boardinghouse master would have been paid as an advance by the captain of the ship and deducted from his wages. Being shanghaied, he has simply dropped out of sight and will probably not visit that port again for years.
What he obtains from the slop chest is his although he has paid double the price for them.
Able Men at Risk
If men of the above stamp were the only ones who are shanghaied, all might be well, but there are others. Farm hands, city bums, and even merchants for a good percent of those “who go down to the sea in ships,” but not willingly if they are in their right minds.
Shanghaiing in its vilest form is nearly a thing of the past as far as American ports are concerned, but there is still enough of it going on to make one sit up and take notice if they are interested in such doings.
Rube Pumpkin
Rube Pumpkin has come to town, after five or six months of strenuous wood chopping in the mountains. Rube has a few dollars that he has saved and he is going to have a good time, and then he is going back to the country.
Rube’s clothing is not of the latest cut, and his hat band may be a little soiled, and being conscious of his short comings in this respect, he steers clear of the high-toned saloons and naturally drifts down to the waterfront, and before evening has come he has made many friends, and has also been spotted by the gang as having the makings about him of a good sailor.
He represents to the gang about twenty good American dollars or more, all depending on the supply and demand for deep water sailors.
Rube wants a drink but he does not want to drink alone, so he carelessly turns from the bar and casting his eye over the crowd, invites one of the number to have a drink with him. That is where Rube makes the mistake of his life.
Naturally, he longs for companionship and totes his new found friend along with him to the next saloon where they have another drink. If the “friend” has not the necessary knockout drops at hand that fact is soon made known to another of the gang and they are quickly forthcoming.
When, in the opinion of the “friend,” Rube is about ripe and ready to pick, a small pill is secretly dropped into his glass of whisky and the drinking delayed till it has had time to dissolve. In a few minutes Rube gets very sleepy, sort of loses interest in drinking and drops into a gentle slumber in one of the barroom chairs. It is then that the gang gets in its work.
When Rube awakens the next morning he is under the impression that a small sized earthquake is getting in its works and he fears that some of his piles of wood may be knocked down. He jumps from the bunk, and though his head is aching fearfully he notices that his surroundings are unfamiliar and the knowledge is too forced through his muddled brain that he is in the forecastle of a deep water ship bound for some port in India.
Rube is very sick for a couple of days but is soon rousted out to the deck and ordered to go to work. Protests cut no figure in the case now, and seasick or no seasick he has to obey the orders of the mate or he will feel the sting of a rope’s end.
Among the crew of a deep water ship there is no sympathy for a sick sailor, so the sooner he gets to doing his share of the work the more pleasant he will find things.
Shanghaiing Gang
The interest in this story, if interest there be, is in the recounting of a few instances of shanghaiing that came under the direct observation of the writer.
Between twenty and thirty years ago, shanghaiing at Astoria, Oregon, was carried on with such a high hand and by such a powerfully organized gang that even the authorities were a trifle backward, or, one might say, were absolutely afraid to interfere, so that fear of the law did not enter into the calculations of the gang when a deep water ship was in need of a crew.
Like death, the shanghaiing gang is no respecter of persons. Everything was meat that came to their net, and when they were hard pushed to fill a complement of men for a ship that was paying a high price for a crew, the knockout drop route was abandoned as the following will give testimony.
Attempted Rescue
About 25 years ago at the above mentioned city, when the salmon business of the world was centered in and about Astoria, it frequently happened that after a ship had departed for the other side of the world, several people were missing from their usual haunts, and it was seldom that the police made any move to look them up. If they could not be found inside of 24 hours it was a certainty that they were off for some foreign land in the recently departed vessel.
A party of three mechanics, of which the writer was one, were returning to their home in the Parker House after an evening of overtime in the shop. It was possibly half-past ten, and, while passing across the shore end of a pier, heard high words and other sounds as if of conflict going on out on the end of the wharf.
We immediately ran out on the wharf and found two of the gang trying to force a third party into a small boat that was tied to the slip. On our approach, the man called on us for help, stating that he was being shanghaied.
We at once took up his cause and a free fight ensued, but the shanghaiers were so determined that they would not give up until we had taken the stakes from a nearby dray and beat them over the head, rescuing the man who was being shanghaied, and whom we found to be perfectly sober and a small merchant of the town.
The merchant attempted to bring some kind of a charge against the gang, but it came to nothing and was hushed up.
Seized the Wrong Guy
One morning, as a ship was slowly dropping down the channel, bound for Europe, a tall man about 35 or possibly 40 years of age came slowly up through the companionway that leads to the crew’s quarters. Stopping on deck for a moment he gazed about him in a dazed manner. He had on neither coat, vest nor hat, and in this condition walked up to the mate and demanded to know the name of the ship he was on.
The mate, with an oath, told him to get forward with the rest of the crew and go to work. The man demurred, and the mate was about to back up his order by the use of a rail pin when for some reason he staved his hand.
The man advanced a step nearer and remarked: “I presume that you are the mate of this ship, and I wish to state that you are taking me to sea against my will, or, in other words, I am being shanghaied. How I came to be here I do not know, but I assure you that I will make it hot for the owners of this vessel if I am not put ashore at once.”
The mate was about to make a strike at the man when he was hailed from the bridge by the pilot who was taking the ship to sea. “Mr. Mate, signal the tug to stop; let go your anchor, and put that man ashore as soon as God will let you. He is the captain of the ship Y____ A___, lying back there in the stream.”
It is needless to say that the pilot’s orders were obeyed with all possible speed. The man they had shanghaied was master of a vessel nearly twice the size of the one he was then on.
Drowned
Another case that did not turn out so fortunately for the victim was as follows:
A ship, loaded with wheat for the Old World, was being taken to sea from Astoria. As she was abreast of Sand Island, a man came rushing on deck and demanded that he be put ashore, stating that he had been shanghaied the night before and had no desire to go to sea.
The mate gave him the usual scowl, and told him what would happen if he did not join the crew forward and do his share of the work in getting the ship under way.
The man rebelled and was struck a blow on the side of the head by the mate. The victim of the gang at once returned the blow and lost no time in following it up, but on the approach of the second mate he sprang for the rail and jumped overboard, swimming in the direction of a fishing boat that was a couple of hundred yards off the quarter. The men in the boat started to pull toward the man with the intention of rescuing him.
In the meantime, the mate had rushed into the cabin and returned to the deck with a rifle in his hands and made the threat that if the fishermen picked the man up he would shoot them; a threat he would undoubtedly have carried into effect; and the man drowned before their eyes.
The body was brought to Astoria and the ship went on her way.
There is some satisfaction in stating that at a later period, the mate of this ship was apprehended for his inhumanity to man and was severely punished.
But this all happened a good many years ago when the victim had slim chances of redress; when the captain and other officers of a ship were inhuman dictators. Not so now. A common seaman can appeal to any court, in any port in the world now, and if there is the slightest truth in the stories he may tell of misuse aboard a ship he will, in nine cases out of ten, get damages.
The above cases are but a few of the many that were perpetrated in the early eighties [1880s] along the Columbia river when shanghaiing was in force.
Source: The Pacific commercial advertiser. (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands), 11 May 1909.
