The Society petitioned the state legislature in 1859 for a $10,000 grant to use to build a proper home for seamen. The bill, with the amount cut in half, passed in the Senate but lost in the Assembly.
Not only sailors came to the Sailors’ Home for succor. The sick, the unemployed, the aged and “in addition, the floating population from the country and mountain towns.” When the rent was raised, the Home moved from Front Street to Hillman’s Temperance House, but it began to sink. As the building twisted, the doors jammed shut, the windows broke, plaster cascaded from the walls. Business was so bad in 1860 that the Superintendent (the ladies had relinquished the post to the menfolk again), Captain W. A. Abbott, quit. Mr. A. Robinson replaced him and cleaned up the wreck of a building as best he could, but runners from the shanghaiing houses made a point of showing the dilapidated Sailors’ Home to the seamen they had in tow. One look was enough to discourage them from staying there. Normally, they would not even bother to look inside, but just follow the runner to a crimping house. With all its faults, by 1861, some 6, 276 men had lodged in the Sailors’ Home, and the Recording Secretary of the Society, H. J. Bunker, was justly proud of its record in abating “the criminal habit of decoying the sailor on shipboard under false pretences.”
When the Davis Street building literally fell apart in 1863, the Sailors’ Home was moved to the old Walton House on the corner of Battery and Vallejo Streets. The new superintendent was Captain James F. Stewart. The Government took an interest now, exempting the Home from taxes and giving it prompt monetary relief after it had taken in a kidnaped soldier, shanghaied as a sailor. Stewart seems to have been a good man. In 1867, for example, he gave away $302 worth of free board, more than the ladies had authorized him. He pleaded, “There is not one of the class aided but would have been made a source of profit to the ‘shanghai’ boardinghouse masters.” The ladies God-blessed him and let his extravagance go.
The Government in 1875 gave the Society the old U.S. Marine Hospital, condemned as uninhabitable by United States authorities after the 1868 earthquake. Andrew Peterson and John Duff took over the building as managers. In 1878 both men were forced to resign for certain “irregularities”—perhaps a penchant for shanghaiing the supposedly succored sailors of the Home. Captain H. S. Tucker replaced them, but in 1880 he left and the controversial Daniel Swannack followed to the post of Superintendent of the Sailors’ Home.
Swannack superintended with a vengeance, releasing reports and manifestos like a prolific P. R. man. One, in 1881, blasted the crimps—“There are in this city a class of persons known as sailor boardinghouse keepers who grow rich by victimizing the sailors from the time they enter the port until their bodies are mortgaged upon some outgoing vessel...” Lumped with the boarding masters were the “liquor saloons, low boardinghouse dens of filth and iniquity, selfish and greedy men who fatten on the failings of others...”
The Home was under fire as mismanaged in 1882, 1884 and 1885, but a chorus of support backed Swannack and the Home, denying, among other things, that the superintendent was bootlegging booze. Swannack took the trouble to deny it, under oath, before a notary, in May 1882. That same year, the crimps ganged up on the runner for the Sailors’ Home and kept him away from arriving vessels, but by the next year 7, 902 lodgers had registered. In the one year of 1884-85, sailors deposited $10, 400 in the Home for safekeeping. No wonder the shanghaiing fraternity was irritated by it.
When a committee of the Coasting Sailors’ Union in 1885 wrote the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that their men were being thrown out of boardinghouses for unionization, they also investigated the Sailors’ Home. They found it “conducted by one Swannack for a society of ladies but really owned by this city.” They admitted it was designed for honest purposes but actually run, they claimed, “as one of the worst class of sailors’ boardinghouses.” They asked for the abrogation of the Home’s lease since it was, according to them, not being run as required by the city and the U.S. Government. They asked for a new lease to allow the sailors themselves to run the Home because, “We have been turned into the streets by the boardinghouse men in order that we might be starved into yielding to the blood money tax, the open collection of which is absolutely prohibited by United States laws. When we turn to the Home for food and shelter, we find it closed against us and aiding the attempt to make us slaves.”
The Board of Supervisors’ Health and Police Committee investigated the Home and found it “most excellent,” and in the best interests of the sailor. Daniel Swannack, who was either pious and righteous or a fraud who affected such a mien for his ladies’ sake, explained the Home’s bad name in some quarters as due to the practice of “parties representing themselves as runners for the Home or using the name ‘Sailors’ Home’ for the purpose of enticing them to other houses.” In 1886 he stated, in his Annual Report, “We reported last year that the opposition had about ceased. There has been now and then some sort of organized opposition along the waterfront but it had died of its own weakness or meanness until now the Home has but little to oppose it. It has fought its way through and now commands the respect and patronage of those who would most gladly have seen it fail.”
Many of the organized sailors still couldn’t swallow Swannack, however. They called him “A friend to the sailor, his castle the Sailors’ Home,” a man only too eager to ship nonunion crews like those he had placed on the Fanny Tucker and the Edward O’Brien in 1887 at $40 per month instead of the union scale of $45. E. L. Delpet, one of the Coast Seaman’s Journal correspondents, termed Swannack “a modern Iscariot.” Delpet damned the superintendent for stuffing sea chests hypocritically with Bibles and tracts and giving sailors cut-rate ($2.50) graves ashore and “securing our bodies after death but leaving us, while alive, a prey to the land sharks which swarm around us!”
The same shortage of seamen which led to the powerful shanghaiing combines of San Francisco and other American ports resulted in an odd but interesting experiment somewhat reminiscent of Britain’s attempts to plant colonies in Canada by using convicts. Men found guilty of petty larceny in San Francisco were given the choice of going to jail or of signing on a windjammer! Enthusiasm for the experiment cooled after several unfortunate incidents which demonstrated the intractability of cons transformed into foc’s’le hands. For example, on the night of May 27, 1858, a two-hour battle was fought on the British ship Ravensdale, anchored off Meiggs Wharf, as a result of this attempt to bypass shanghaiers.
The Ravensdale, bound from Puget Sound for Plymouth, England, called at San Francisco to pick up a crew, since most of her complement had deserted in Washington Territory in order to go to the Fraser River gold mines of British Columbia. Captain Dixon took a chance with the new labor supply and signed on three criminals from the city jail—Phil Riley, Pete Williams, and Jack Stewart. (Williams is probably the same man as the one stabbed in Dutch Charley’s saloon in 1855.) The anchor had not even been heaved out of the mud when the three mutinied. They attacked the ship’s officers the first night they were on board and caused the crew to go into hiding. During the two-hour gun battle on the decks of the Ravensdale, dozens of shots were fired and there were several desperate, hand-to-hand struggles. At daylight the crew rallied to support the ship’s officers and also raised a flag of distress. When a party of police boarded the ship they found the three criminals badly wounded. None of the lucky ship’s officers were badly hurt.
This experiment a failure, shipmasters turned once again to the shanghaiers. It was a booming and profitable business for more than fifty years in San Francisco. As early as 1852 twenty-three gangs were engaged in crimping. That year the Swedish naval frigate Eugenia called at San Francisco on its two-year, around the world cruise. Frisco, known then as “the hoyden city” and “the wickedest city in the world,” was briefly in a more or less law-abiding mood. The editors of the Alta California reflected this feeling by pointing to the statistics on crime for th
e month of August 1852—there were only two burglaries, presumably no murders (for none were listed), only thirty-three larcenies, six desertions by sailors and eight cases of mutinous conduct by seamen. “The amount of crime,” the paper said, “is small for a seaport city of such size and whose population is of such a heterogeneous nature.”
Nevertheless, the officers and petty officers of the Eugenia warned their young charges against the dangers of Frisco before they let the first quarter of the crew go ashore on leave. The other three quartors of the Alta California reflected this feeling by pointing to the hoyden city. Five of the crew turned up missing almost immediately, so all further liberty was canceled. Police found three of the young vikings drugged and shanghaied aboard a merchant vessel in the harbor, ready to make sail. Swedish Consul J. J. L. Herrlich reported home that “At the request of Captain A. de Virgin, I have employed three policemen to search different vessels for five sailors who were missing from His Majesty’s frigate Eugenia. I paid them for the trouble of recovering three men the sum of British pounds 8.6.8. Further, I gave to a man who gave secret information of the hiding place of the men the sum of British pounds 10.8.4. The money paid is hardly half of what is generally paid here for such services….”
The officers of the Eugenia were certainly impressed with the adventurous city. They noted, “with a mixture of delight, dismay, moral indignation, and reluctant admiration, the absence of churches, the wealth and the poverty, the number of bawdy houses, the mingling of the races, and the high cost of living.” The Swedish Navy wrote off the two missing men and the Eugenia sailed away. Corporal Salomon Zachrisan Haij was one and bandsman Wessman was the other.
The Consulate at the time said, “A certain consolation is found in the fact that one of the men is a musician and a very poor one.”
The Eugenia had not been singled out for any special attention. Every ship which called at the Golden Gate City was subject to raiding by the shanghaiers. Edward Ely wrote of the St. Thomas ready to sail about the time Bully Waterman’s Challenge came into port, “I say that our crew is on board but I am by no means sure of it. They are a great set of men but we have had the greatest trouble in the world to keep them on board. We dare not even send them ashore in the boat with the captain as they will desert and get drunk as sure as fate. We also are obliged to keep a strict lookout, lest any of the shore boats come alongside to take them off. Jack is always ready to spend the last cent of his money before he leaves shore and the sharks and grog house keepers are always ready to supply the means.”
One of these sharks of whom Ely spoke was Trask Brown, a Dutch boarding master and runner who, like the already mentioned crimp, George Reuben, liked to specialize in shanghaiing squareheads (or Germans). Brown was really a hard nut. If the annoyed shipmaster should remonstrate with him about his coming aboard, he would pitch right into him. Finally, the German Consul brought Brown to the Recorder’s Court where Judge Waller called the crimp’s conduct unjustifiable. He slapped a $50 fine on the Dutchman and put him under $500 bond to keep the peace.
Now and again the law tightened up on crimps, as in Brown’s case or in that of Thomas King. King, a boardinghouse keeper, in January 1854 was fined $100 for “assaulting and threatening to Shanghaie [sic] a sailor.” More often than not, however, shipmasters had to look out for themselves, as the captain of the Britisher, Nazarene, did in July 1855. Two shanghaiers, Slack and Thornton, were both shot when they tried to board the Nazarene to decoy her crew ashore. One would think that this kind of dealing with the crimps would have discouraged them from making up boarding parties but such was, most definitely, not the case. The truth is, the stakes of shanghaiing were too high to allow such setbacks as these to interrupt the growth of the “business.” Captain James F. Stewart, one of the Sailors’ Home superintendents, could vouch for this by citing a story of 1869.
An invalid boy, back from the Orient where he had picked up dysentery, was taken by a runner to a druggist upon his arrival in port.
There he was given six bits’ worth of quack medicine and then taken to a bar where he was persuaded to stand treat. Thinking his sickness and feebleness would surely protect him from shanghaiing, he was really shocked when only four hours after he had landed, the runner said he had worked hard and managed to find him a first-rate chance on a Liverpool-bound ship. There was a $60 advance in it for the lad. To top it, the runner said, he had discovered that California’s climate was “the worst possible place for his disease.” Pleading his extreme weakness, the boy was left alone until the third day, when the crimp repeated his offer. When he refused again, he was cursed with the vilest epithets and kicked out of the boardinghouse. But first the landlord charged him $9. 50 for the three days of his stay, including $5 “for the bartender.” When the young fellow protested the particularly imaginary bar charge, saying, “Why, I never troubled him!” the crimp answered, “That’s just it! You confounded fool, he was waiting there all day and you never gave him an order! Do you think he was going to lose his time for nothing?” The boy escaped the clutches of the shanghaiers and put up in the Sailors’ Home, but he died shortly thereafter on a coasting voyage, from his weakened condition.
Another of the international set of scoundrels of San Francisco Bay was a crimp named De Fries, probably the John De Fries who fell afoul of the law several times in the 1850s in S. F. In 1852 the Dutch Consul, Gildemeester, complained to the Recorder’s Court that his countryman, a runner, was habitually boarding Dutch vessels in the harbor to entice away their sailors. A warrant was issued and De Fries was apprehended in the act, thanks to one of his favorite tricks—persuading a man to desert and then turning him in for the reward. The Recorder gave De Fries three months in jail, a $100 fine and a warning that if he appeared before him again, “I shall visit you with the severest penalty of the law.”
De Fries had been trapped when he persuaded a sailor, Trepstra, to desert from the Dutch bark Ann, then turned him in to the captain and pocketed the customary reward for a captured deserter. He tried to really milk the situation, however, and was soon to regret it. De Fries got word to Trepstra that he would be alongside the Ann at 2 a.m. in the morning before sailing. He would take him off and get him an engagement in a vessel for $150 a month. Trepstra showed the note to his captain and the latter arranged with police to give De Fries a warm reception. But the latter rowed out so carefully and quietly that the first thing the lurking officers knew his voice was hoarsely whispering up the ship’s side, “Come into the boat. Come into the boat.” The police, in the same throaty tones, urged him to come topside. He did so and the jig was up. “The betrayer was betrayed.”
The papers tried to expose the dirty business of shanghaiing and arouse the public against it, but their efforts to see it given a coup de grace were in vain. The San Francisco Times for October 21, 1861, reported on shanghaiers: “They swarm over the rail like pirates and virtually take possession of the deck. The crew are shoved into the runners’ boats and the vessel is often left in a perilous situation, with none to manage her, the sails unfurled, and she is liable to drift afoul of the shipping at anchor. In some cases, not a man has been left aboard in half an hour after the anchor has been dropped.
“In more than one instance, the crew of a newly-arrived foreign vessel have actually been driven like slaves over the ship’s side, stupefied with drugged liquor, and taken on board some other vessel and sent to sea, fit subjects for scurvy, without putting feet upon land.”
Almost a decade later, the California Police Gazette was deploring the same thing: “One of the most outrageous wrongs of the day is the system of shanghaeing [sic] which, of late, has been carried on in this city. Sailors under the influence of drugged liquors are made to sign shipping articles and, before they come to their senses, are miles away from the shore bound on a long voyage with no alternative than to submit. Every few days complaints are made that some unlucky fellow has been seized an
d forced aboard a distant-bound vessel. The occasion of this is that seamen are scarce and that vessels cannot clear without their full complement of men. Some poor tar, recently arrived, who desires a little rest and time to look about him falls into the hands of the land sharks, is soon made insensible with liquors, placed on board some outward-bound craft, and before he recovers sufficiently to know his legal rights, he is far beyond their operation... This practice has been carried on for a long time and but few, if any, of the offenders brought to justice. How much longer this is to continue we cannot tell. Not always do the landsharks take the preliminary steps to get their victims drunk. They catch him unawares in some quiet and unfrequented locality and forcibly carry him to the ship where he must tamely submit to his fate or be placed in irons. Many instances of this grabbing process reach our ears, and there must be many that are never known. It is a disgrace to our city that such acts can be, and are so frequently, perpetrated.”
A short time later, the California Police Gazette, sniffing the trail of shanghaiers on the water front, came upon their spoor mixed with that of the genus flatfoot and, putting two and two together, came up with a four-alarm suspicion that there were close ties between boardinghouse and station house. In an editorial tided “Shanghaiers and the Police,” the Gazette said: “Without any disposition to find fault or carp at the actions of a very useful body of ‘peace preventives,’ we would like to ask what particular routine of duties consumes the time and taxes the energies of the Harbor Police that some attention should not be paid to that detestable class of society infesting the water front, known as shanghaiers. A most outrageous case occurred in this city last week, and the statements of the victim and the principal witness of the affair throws a very peculiar shade upon the actions of certain officers who were cognizant of the outrage. These statements implied that there existed collusion between the police and the men who attempted the abduction. We have seen no denial of the charges, and therefore cannot help believing that there may be some truth in them. ‘Where there is so much smoke, there must be some fire.’ A few nights since, a man was picked up in the bay who stated that he had escaped from a vessel when lying in the stream on board of which he had been shanghaied, and that there were several others in the vessel who were also detained against their will. As the vessel sailed during the night, the truth or falsity of the man’s statement could not be ascertained. We know, however, that such things are of frequent occurrence here and having no reason to doubt the man’s veracity, are compelled to believe that another dastardly outrage upon the liberty of unoffending citizens has been perpetrated in the very face of the law and under the very eyes of the authorities. The public would like to have the evidence of a little more zeal on the part of the police in this particular branch of their duties. We think it is important that shanghaeing should be broken up, and that vessels should be allowed to enter the harbor unmolested by boardinghouse runners, est omne genus.”
Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore Page 25
