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.

Etymology

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. The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud or coercion".

Background

right|thumb|The shipping articles, or contract between the crew and the ship, from a 1786 voyage to Boston.

Crimps flourished in port cities like London and Liverpool in England and in San Francisco, Portland, Astoria, Seattle, Savannah, and Port Townsend 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.

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 (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.

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. These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who 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.

The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade.

Some examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunko" Kelly of Portland. 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.

In 1872, Congress passed the Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 to combat crimps. It also limited the making of seamen's allotments to only close relatives.

  • Tom Codd the Shanghai Prince of New Bedford, Mass.
  • James Turk of Portland
  • Billy Gohl, known as "the Ghoul of Grays Harbor", of Aberdeen, Washington (also a known serial killer)
  • Tommy Moore of Buenos Aires

See also

  • Barbary Coast, San Francisco
  • Blackbirding
  • Clipper
  • Froberg mutiny
  • Impressment
  • Involuntary servitude
  • Maritime history of California
  • Maritime history of the United States
  • Shanghai tunnels (Portland, Oregon): Tunnels allegedly used to shanghai laborers for ships in the early 20th century
  • Shanghaied in Astoria, a long-running musical comedy
  • The Big Valley – "Barbary Red" episode of Season 1 of the drama series covers this topic.
  • The Live Ghost – A 1934 comedy short film starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy
  • The Go Getter – A 1937 comedy starring George Brent and Charles Winninger

Notes

References

  • Samuel Dickson. "Shanghai Kelly" in Tales of San Francisco. Stanford: University Press. 1957.
  • Stewart Holbrook, "Bunco Kelly, King of the Crimps" in Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks, edited by Biran Booth. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1992.
  • Strecker, Mark. Shanghaiing Sailors: A Maritime History of Forced Labor, 1849/1915 (McFarland & Company, 2014), comprehensive scholarly history. 260 pp. online review.
  • "Sailor 'Boarding Masters,' etc." San Francisco News Letter February 19, 1881.
  • Shanghaiing at StupidQuestion.net.
  • The Barbary Coast: San Francisco's Bawdy Paradise has a section on crimping.
  • "Shanghaied! The 1895 Voyage of the A. R. Tucker" – a New Bedford, Mass., account.
  • An account of crimping for the East India Company in London – 1767.