Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

by Richard Dillon

  Luckily for masters, mates, pilots, firemen, wipers, oilers, sailors, cooks, stewards, water tenders, pursers, et al., there is a legal loophole which protects them from the wiles of conniving, privateering shipboard femmes fatales. The second paragraph of Title 18, Section 2198 of the Criminal Code specifies that “subsequent intermarriage of the parties may be pleaded in bar of conviction and no conviction shall be had on the testimony of the female seduced without other evidence.” (Hear, hear!)

  2. Sky Pilots and Pen Pushers

  AMONG the earliest men to take up cudgels in behalf of America’s oppressed merchant seamen were the Reverend Lyman Beecher of Boston and Samuel C. Damon, the esteemed seamen’s chaplain of Honolulu. Another, less well-known defender was the Reverend William Taylor, known universally as “Father Taylor.” Taylor was, by inclination and by training in Baltimore and Washington, a street preacher, adept in exhorting crowds alfresco. This training fitted him ideally for a San Francisco pastorate in 1849 since there were no Protestant churches yet built there. About the only Houses of the Lord were temporary, salt-stained deckhouses aboard hulks in the bay, which did duty as seamen’s bethels.

  In the fall of 1848, while passing up Baltimore Street in the Monumental City, Taylor was hailed by an old duffer named Christian Keener. The old man hurried up to him and exclaimed that Bishop Waugh wished to see him at once in Armstrong and Berry’s bookstore. Taylor made his way there where the Bishop informed him that he was ready to send him as a missionary to California, provided he had no objection. On the contrary, Taylor was delighted with the new Challenge. He bundled his family aboard a Baltimore clipper despite the charges of his friends that he was guilty of cruelty toward his loved ones in transporting them to such “a barbarous land.”

  On September 21, 1849, Captain Wilson brought the Andalusia into San Francisco Bay. Never having entered the harbor, he ran a bit north, off Point Reyes, then headed into the fog which shrouded the port. Like a miracle, the wet curtain parted and they found themselves in bright California sunshine as they passed inside the fog belt. Ducks and pelicans by the thousands welcomed the vessel, playful whales spouted and dived within thirty yards of the ship, being repaid for their good spirits with pistol balls from the more brutal passengers. Captain Wilson skillfully brought the clipper to anchor without a pilot, culminating a trip of five months and three days from Baltimore.

  A brother of one of the passengers came aboard that night and was pumped dry of all information and misinformation he possessed on the city. He spoke the truth in saying that cooks were worth $300 per month but that gamblers were the aristocracy of the new city since their’s was the most profitable, and thus the most respectable, business for a gentleman to follow. Taylor put the question to him, “Are there no ministers of the Gospel, or churches in the place?” “Yes,” said the San Franciscan. “We have one preacher, but preaching won’t pay here, so he quit preaching and went to gambling. There is but one church in town and that has been converted into a jail.” When the gentleman was told that the Reverend Taylor had a knocked-down church aboard, he told the parson to sell the church by all means. It would never be used for that purpose, of course, but he could easily realize $10,000 on it for a gambling den. The hard-shelled Taylor refused.

  The next morning the passengers went ashore. Taylor found the man’s claims all true except that no church had been made into a jail; it was the town’s schoolhouse, on Portsmouth Plaza, which had been pressed into use to hold the ruffians who were descending on the city. Taylor set out to find news of his fellow missionary, Isaac Owens, who had started overland for California, and then inquired after any Methodist families, or Christian families in general, who might need his services. While the Methodist chapel was going up, the slim congregation met in what was known as “The shanty with the blue cover.” Taylor went across the bay to the contra costa, climbed the Coast Range hills to the redwood groves and cut out, singlehanded, a two-story house, sixteen by twenty-six feet, for his parsonage. He did not forget to make 3,000 shingles, either.

  Father Taylor devoted himself to getting his church finished and to converting souls. In doing the latter, he made quite a splash by preaching in Portsmouth Plaza directly opposite the dens of iniquity of the gambling fraternity, the plush El Dorado and Parker House. Some of his brethren felt the cardsharps would actually shoot him down in the street if he preached against betting but Taylor’s sermon was a success, after he had broken the ice by singing a hymn. He found himself surrounded by more than a thousand curious men. His success at soul saving could not be described in stronger terms than “moderate,” however, for after a week of preaching every night the net result was “three persons who professed to experience religion.” On the other hand, he once collected $400 by passing the hat in the Plaza after preaching in behalf of his seamen’s bethel.

  Father Taylor became particularly interested in sailors via his contacts with them while he was doing chaplain’s duty to the five hundred patients of the United States Marine Hospital on Rincon Point. The building was erected on land given the Federal Government by the city at a cost of $220,000 taken from a fund created by a tax of 25 cents per head levied on American merchant seamen, deducted from their wages by shipmasters and then paid in at the Customs House. In return for this fee, every sailor was entitled to what amounted to an early form of health insurance. In case of illness, he could apply for a certificate of admission from the Collector of the Port and thus would not have to take his chances as a charity patient in the city hospital. By dint of hard work, Taylor was able to “save” a number of seamen during his seven years of preaching at the Marine Hospital, in the streets, on Long Wharf, on steamer decks, atop benches, whiskey barrels and brandy casks on the Embarcadero. Even notorious A. M. Brown, “extremely wicked and profane, an avowed enemy of Christ and His Church, and especially of missionaries in foreign fields,” gave in to the persuasive parson.

  After successfully organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church on Powell Street and serving there two years as pastor, Taylor established a Seamen’s Bethel composed of a church for sailors and a home for shipwrecked and destitute mariners. He started without a dollar’s worth of help and in two years had the best church in the state. Yet, Taylor’s evangelizing and revivalism (and that of other men of the cloth) had little if any lasting effect on the men of the sea he met. He certainly was able to do nothing to alleviate the miserable conditions in which Americans existed aboard ship or even ashore, where they fell under the tender mercies of shanghaiing landlords and saloonkeepers. Most of them tossed off their religious lessons with a joke like the following, a popular description by a San Francisco sailor of “What is a Christian?” The sailor stated, “There is a clothing merchant up in Boston who keeps the command of the Scriptures where it says, ‘Thou shalt take the stranger in’ I was a stranger and he took me in bad, on a pea-jacket I bought of him.”

  Taylor deplored what seemed to be the occupational disease of sailormen: drunkenness. However, he never seemed to realize— much less grapple with—the real cause of sailors’ leaning on a whiskey bottle as on a crutch. He, like so many temperance touters, missed the point. He would sermonize, “Why do you drink? Because it gratifies your vitiated appetite. Every repetition, as you imagine, increases the gratification. The absence of this gratification creates, as a man said to me one day after preaching on the Long Wharf, ‘a terrible pain down in here,’ which must be relieved. And thus, by the combined forces of the pleasure and the pain occasioned by the absence of it, your desire for the deadly cup becomes more and more imperative.”

  The pastor should have realized the why of drunkenness among sailors. In the bottle they sought relief, escape; escape from a brutal system condoned by society. William B—, a visitor to Taylor’s bethel, once told him of his experiences before the mast. “I shipped in the brig C. F., Captain P—, from Baltimore. After we got out to sea, the captain flogged me regularly three time
s a day, all the way out, and called me by no other name than ‘you son of a bitch’ On one occasion he said to me, ‘I believe whipping don’t hurt you much so now I am going to punish you’ He took me and tied me over the hawsepipe at the bows where I was drenched with sea water at every dip of the brig. I remained there in soak, without a bite to eat, for three days and nights. The captain also beat the cook till he jumped overboard, and then lowered a boat and beat him in the water, and took him up just in time to save his life.” Small wonder William B—became “a wild, drinking boy, nineteen years of age.” Hazing and flogging (the latter abolished in the Navy but still part of merchant service “discipline”) were enough to drive anyone to drink.

  The first out-and-out attack on the nefarious practice of crimping on the Pacific Coast was a sermon delivered by Taylor to an attentive audience in September 1855 in Portsmouth Plaza. He later wrote it out, from memory. It is one of the most important sermons ever delivered in Frisco. Taylor was one of the first to use the term “shanghaiing,” a San Francisco word which eventually replaced in most ports the older term, “crimping.” He called his sermon “Shanghaiing the Sailors.”

  After paying tribute to the sailor’s role in American commerce and history, and reminding his listeners of the hard and dangerous life which they lived, Taylor ventured the opinion that United States merchant seamen, “if Christianized, themselves,” would be the most successful auxiliaries to missionaries in spreading the Gospel in heathen lands. A number of his listeners retorted, “But we can more easily convert the heathen than the sailors!”

  Now the sailor’s padre began to warm to his subject. “What class of men so deserving has been so neglected in the past? The extent of the abuse they have suffered in home and foreign ports by the land shark’ fraternity, a system of abuse familiarly known in California under the title ‘shanghaiing’ has never been learned by the mass of our people, a ‘mystery of iniquity’ the enormity of which the light of eternity only can reveal.

  “The system of shanghaiing, to which I invite attention, is almost as ancient as the commerce of nations; but the term Shanghaiing is a modern, California name, the origin of which I will give you in due time. I say system of Shanghaiing, because it embraces a combination of laws and forces, employed by a combination of men for the accomplishment of a specific end, namely, to reduce to a state of perfect vassalage and voluntary serfdom the millions of men who ‘go down into the sea in ships,’ and to gather all the fruits of their toils. The secret motto of the system is, ‘get all the sailor’s money, honestly if most convenient, but get it.’

  “A single shanghaiing fraternity (and we have twenty-three of them along our water front) embraces 1. a sailor landlord, alias ‘land shark,’ alias ‘shanghaier,’ 2. a drayman, 3. a ‘longshoreman,’ 4. a sailor lawyer, 5. a shipping master. The sailor landlord keeps a sailor boardinghouse, bar, etc. The longshoreman mans, with a pair of oars, a Whitehall boat. The sailor lawyer prosecutes suits against captains and owners of vessels and otherwise collects seamen’s wages, damages for maltreatment, etc. The shipping master provides crews for the ships as they clear by contract with the shipmaster, for five dollars per head. The captain of the vessel ships none of his men directly; they must all come to him through the shipping office, where the shipping articles are kept for signature. The whole contract for the voyage with the crew is made by the shipping master, who is to see them aboard at the hour of sailing, and the captain has nothing to do with them ‘til he gives the order for sailing. The advance wages are paid, not in money lest the sailor should spend it and then refuse to go to sea, but by a check on the shipping office to be paid three days after the ship sails. The shipmaster, it will be seen, is not a party in the shanghaiing business and the shipping master is a party from necessity rather than from design, as we will show, and may, nevertheless, be an honorable man. The lawyer may, by possibility, be an honorable man, but he will bear watching.

  “We will now show you the practical working of the system. A ship is telegraphed and the longshoreman is ready with his boat. He is in the stream and listening for the command, ‘Let go the anchor!’ Immediately he is on deck and perfectly delighted to meet his poor brother seamen from a long voyage.

  “How are you, my good fellows? I’m glad to see you! You’ve got to the right port at last. The most glorious country in the world; a regular godsend for poor sailors! A crew came in last week and left their ship, as they all do here, and now every man of them is getting a hundred dollars a month to stay ashore. If you’ll come along with me and put up at our house, I have chances awaiting and you shall have work ashore at once, and wages that are wages!’

  “Thus he decoys the entire crew. Sometimes he takes them right away in defiance of the captain. On one occasion a captain ran out with a small derringer in his hand and the longshoreman said, ‘Captain, what are you doing with that thing?’ ‘If you interfere with my men,’ replied the captain, ‘I’ll put a ball through you!’ The boatman, pulling out one of Colt’s large revolvers, said, ‘Here, Captain, take this; that little thing is of no account’ And, turning on his heel, he said to the crew, ‘Come on, boys. Pass down your dunnage here into my boat. I’ll take care of you’

  “They all went in spite of the captain’s threats. But the usual method is to make an appointment with the crew to have the boat alongside at a certain watch of the night. The boys all get ready at the hour appointed. Their faithful friend, who has promised to emancipate them from the horrors of a sailor’s life, is on hand and bears them to the wharf. The drayman is waiting on the wharf with his dray, on which their dunnage is transferred from the boat and now all hands march up together to the ‘home’ The landlord greets them with a hearty ‘Shake hands! Welcome to my house, my good fellows! You’ve had a hard time of it, I know. I am prepared to sympathize with you, for I am a regular old salt myself. I’m glad you’ve come to this glorious country. Walk in! Walk in! And make yourselves at home. Everything in this world you want you shall have while you stay with me.’

  “Now all hands must stand ‘treat’ The landlord treats, the longshoreman treats, the drayman and each sailor treats, and by this time the whole crew is drunk, unless, perchance, there may be one who has ‘signed the pledge’ The longshoreman and drayman now demand their money, which the landlord pays—ten dollars a head for decoying and bringing ashore, and five dollars per head for the drayman—and charges it to the sailors’ accounts; and all the drinks, real and imaginary, are also set to their account.

  “The lawyer now comes in and through the landlord gets all their claims against the ship, which he collects either by a compromise or a suit at law, as may best suit the convenience of the captain, half of which he keeps for his trouble and pays the other half over to the landlord on behalf of the sailors.

  “Next comes the shipping master who says, ‘I want twenty men for the ship Water Witch by five o’clock this afternoon’ ‘Very good’ says the landlord, ‘you shall have them’ And often the very crew that came in the morning are shipped before they recover from the first drunk. When they wake up from their golden dreams, they find themselves at sea in a strange ship, minus their back and advance wages, and most of their clothing. A part of their clothing they find in their chests and a bottle of whiskey to keep, to sober up on, and to remember their friend, the landlord.

  “When the sailor’s bill at the boardinghouse runs up to cover the advance, the landlord says to him, ‘Jack, you must ship’ ‘I won’t do it,’ says Jack.

  “You shall do it; you owe me a hundred dollars and you must either pay it today or go to sea in the ship Challenge’ ‘But I don’t want to go to sea yet,’ says Jack ‘Oh well, never mind,’ says the landlord ‘You’re a clever fellow and you may stay at my house as long as you please, and pay me when you get ready. Come, let’s take a drink’

  “Jack, very glad to be on so good terms with the landlord walks up to the bar and dri
nks to the health of his master. In ten minutes he is as insensible as a log. When he recovers from his mysterious sleep, he is out of sight of land. He is awakened by the stern command, ‘Wake up here and go to work!’ The poor fellow, rubbing his eyes, inquires, ‘What ship is this? Whither bound?’

  “ ‘To Hong Kong’

  “ ‘How did I get here?’

  “ ‘Why, you shipped,’ says the master.

  “ ‘I never shipped in this ship’

  “ ‘Yes you did, and you must go to work without any more grumbling,’ replies the captain sternly.

  “I want to see the articles,’ says the sailor. ‘Well, sir, here they are; what is your name?’ says the captain. ‘My name is John Waters’ “There it is, written on the articles in two places, once by the landlord and once by the shipping master.’ ‘I never signed those articles,’ replies John. ‘No,’ replies the captain, ‘you were too drunk to write your name, but there’s your mark.’

  “John puts his hand on his head and studies a moment, and says, ‘I want an advance before I go to work. How much was I to get?’ ‘One hundred and twenty-five dollars for the run, paid in advance,’ replies the captain’And here’s your account from the shipping office; your bill with the boarding master took one hundred dollars, leaving twenty-five dollars, which he handed to me to give to you when you got sober’ John takes the twenty-five dollars and goes to work.

  “But you ask, ‘What did the land shark give to the sailor to take away his senses so suddenly?’ It was a compound of whiskey, brandy, gin and opium, which, if a man drinks, he sinks into the Lethean stream for a dozen of hours. In days past, when seamen were scarce in this port, very many landsmen as well as seamen were thus drugged and shipped. On one occasion a shoemaker stepped up to the bar to take a drop and waked up the next day at sea, and did not get back to his business for nine months. A brickmason, as I was creditably informed, was thus shipped in the Hurricane. Again, a drayman left his dray in the street and went in to take a nip, and saw his dray no more.