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

  Walter Howell of the British Board of Trade wrote to the Undersecretary of State in 1899 that “British consuls are fully alive to the magnitude of the evils of crimping and desertion at these ports and they already do all that is in their power to assist shipmasters.” Their all was not enough. And British Consul W. Clayton Pickergill, in San Francisco, wrote the Foreign Office, “I do not propose to become a policeman for the United States.” The crimps got around existing legislation so neatly and easily that many in Britain advocated a U.S.-United Kingdom consular convention on crimping as the only solution. The British organ, The Shipping World, in June 1899 commented, “Verily the evasions of the Advance Note Legislation in the States and the tricks and stratagems of the shipping agents and boardinghouse keepers to continue the bleeding of Poor Jack in America are infinite in their variety.”

  The British consuls did the best they could. They were officially reminded by a Foreign Office Circular of the newest anti-shanghaiing legislation in the U.S.A. “I am directed by the Marquess of Salisbury to call your attention to the Act of Congress of the 21st December 1898 which contains provisions prohibiting the payment of advance wages to seamen, the main object of the latter being to protect the seamen from the extortions of boardinghouse keepers and shipping masters [crimps]….”

  As pressure on the crimps mounted from Britain—the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom strongly urging, for example, that “pressure be put upon the Government of the United States to see that not only is crimping made illegal but that the law be strictly enforced”—the crimps struck back. They began to put the squeeze on British shipmasters, particularly on the Pacific Coast. They delayed the sailing of vessels by withholding men, by extortionate demands for blood money, by instigating lawsuits on the part of crewmen to libel vessels or hale masters into court. Often, ship captains gave in, to save expense by getting away somewhere near their scheduled departure date. Almost complete surrender by shipowners occurred in San Francisco where crimping was legalized by British firms contracting for men, with a guaranteed payment of $40 blood money, to the designated shipping masters. (The payment was levied against the seamen’s future wages, of course.) As owners were forced to pay increased sums in blood money they tried to cut wages. It was the seamen who paid, as usual, squeezed between the shipowners and the shanghaiers.

  Pickergill wanted to throw the crimps out of the Consulate’s Shipping Office, where they loitered about with an arrogant air, almost taking over. But the contracts embarrassed him. There were up to fifty British firms involved. He felt that the no advance-no allotment legislation of Congress made these contracts cancelable. “I shall be glad, therefore,” he wrote, “to be encouraged by the Board of Trade to relegate the shipping master to his own place, which is certainly not between the seaman and the consul.”

  Tommy Chandler, Chicken Devine’s old adversary, was one Frisco crimp who had contracts with British shipowners which guaranteed him a minimum “bonus” (blood money) of $25 per man he recruited. He had agents in Glasgow—Dawson and Company— who worked out the arrangements with the Clyde shipowners. Thus, when a ship like the S.S. Westminster called in the bay, she had to ship an entirely new crew each time—from twenty to twenty-six positions at $25 each. Even when crews were left alone on ships lying in the bay, there was no guarantee that the men were safe from the crimp’s clutches. As the master of the Crompton said bitterly, “The crimps merely allow you to board them until they need them.”

  The cost of blood money in San Francisco alone was enormous. In 1900, when the evil practice of crimping was almost over, the ship M. E. Watson had to pay Tommy Chandler $100 for four men; the Cypromene $286 (this sum including a service charge, called the shipping master’s fee, on top of the blood-money charge). Her sister ships in late 1899 or early 1900 had to pay the following sums into the coffers of the crimps—Aristomene, $416; Dynomene, $260; Sardomene, $520; Pythomene, $276; Cleomene, $162, and Jessomene, $208.

  Captain Snodden of the Dynomene felt that he had been let off easy. He ran into a vessel in Iquique which had shipped twenty-one men in Frisco at $30 a head. Twelve of the men had never been to sea, three more were of no use at all, and one man had a wooden leg. “Luckily the ship was not bound around the Horn,” said Snodden. The captain had had no choice in San Francisco. The shipping master told him, “I’ll let the ship swing round her anchor for a while if you refuse any of my men.”

  Snodden himself had lost two men by desertion or induced desertion in Frisco. (One man deserted the night of the day he signed ship’s articles.) “I expect the boardinghouse masters got him as soon as they found he had signed on. They watch the Consul’s office all the time.”

  As the sunset for crimping approached, only one American city, New York, exceeded San Francisco in desertions. In 1896, for example, British vessels lost 923 deserters in Frisco and 2,633 in New York. In 1898 it was 1,316 in S. F. and in 1900, 1,302. The Board of Trade felt that whatever the expense of arresting deserters it was cheaper than continually buying substitutes at blood-money prices. But in 1898 only one British tar was recaptured in San Francisco after deserting, though it cost only about $25 to apprehend him. The trouble was that it was a chore of the U.S. Marshal to find deserters. City police were not involved. Not all deserters, of course, were forced off their ships. Many were sick of the sea. Rev. James Fell, the Fricso seamen’s chaplain found runaway apprentices turned into streetcar conductors, bootblacks and clam diggers.

  Bare-faced extortion became the rule on the Embarcadero, perhaps because the crimps saw the handwriting on the wall. Their day would soon be done. In 1897 a seaman from the Burmah was told he must go to a certain boardinghouse for one night if he wanted to get a berth on a ship. He did and was charged $15 for shipping master’s services and $25 for board and room. This ate up his advance. In the case of the Talus, twenty men signed on at the Consulate. Their $20 advance notes were taken away before they reached the street. They were put on board protesting. When they refused duty, they were ironed. None of them owed the crimps more than a few shillings. Some had never been to sea. But none of this, of course, meant the slightest to a shanghaier who now had a bona fide legal contract to recruit seamen, in addition to his extralegal resources.

  Many “deserters” were run off their ships by conniving captains. Some simply wished to save the owners’ money by not having to feed a forecastle full of hungry sailors while the ship was laid up, perhaps for months, awaiting the wheat harvest. However, others were getting kickbacks from the crimps whom they supplied with seamen by running them off their own ships. When the British Consul charged certain British captains with this practice, the number of desertions in San Francisco miraculously declined sharply. As the Consul observed, it was obvious that not all shipmasters were exactly in bodily fear of the crimps. “A visit to Limejuice Corner shows quite a different relation between the two classes.”

  Consul C. W. Bennett of San Francisco was particularly disgusted by the actions of Captain D. W. Thomson of the Falls of Halladale. He tried to run his crew off and keep their wages. He kept one man, Corcoran, in irons for seventy days though he was ready to turn to and the mate urged the master to let him return to duty. “During the twenty-six years I have been in the Consular Service,” commented Bennett, “I have never met a case which paralleled this in meanness.”

  Another captain, L. E. Robbins of the Ancona, according to Bennett, was actually in the pay of the crimps. As late as 1902, he got $10 for every man he ran off his ship. And he could usually run about fifteen oft per visit.

  Shanghaiers could always hoodwink or bribe sailors if they could not bully them. Thus, when the Liverpool in 1901 tried to avoid dealing with the crimping combine, the organized crimps posted notices all over the Embarcadero which announced a monthly raise in seamen’s wages. Of course no sailors would ship for anything less than the new Seamen’s Landlords’ Association wages. To clinch their control
, the Association cowed the two free-lance shipping masters, Berg and Hermann. To punish the captain of the Liverpool, for his temerity in trying to do business without going through the Seamen’s Landlords’ Association, they kept the Liverpool riding at anchor from the 5th of the month, when she was ready to sail, until the 17th. In the meantime, the crimps placed men on all the other vessels in the bay and the Liverpool’s captain saw ship after ship sail during his enforced stay.

  With great cheek, that pious fraud, Tommy Chandler, wrote to Messrs. Henry Fernie & Sons of Liverpool in regard to the affair of the ship Liverpool: “We have done our utmost for the past ten years to make our business clean as possible and had wages down to three pounds on several occasions and also blocked all combinations until the U.S. law came into force two years ago, limiting the advance to one month. Then we got three of Messrs. R. W. Leyland & Co’s vessels to sea at three pounds per month and twenty-five dollars bonus. Yet they were not satisfied. From our experience as shipping masters over a period of thirty years, we never saw men so scarce as they have been in the past five years, yet the Boarding Masters Association acted fairly.”

  How did the crimps maintain such a tight, monopolistic grip on the labor supply? By violence, for one thing. A British Foreign Office memorandum of as late a date as 1901 read, “Not infrequently the crimps resort to actual violence and the captains appear to submit from fear of attacks on the streets. Sometimes seamen are practically kidnapped….”

  Captain James Craighie of the Sierra Blanca explained this to the Foreign Office: “I have been a master mariner for seventeen years and have during that time visited most of the Pacific ports of the USA. I have always considered it prudent not to obstruct the crimps in their business, because of the retribution which was sure to follow both to myself and my owners. The crimps are very strong politically and have a great amount of power which they use to suit their own ends. ... (I do not desire my name or my ship’s name published, fearing trouble when I next visit the ports mentioned.)”

  When Craighie brought the Afghanistan into San Francisco Bay he lost his entire crew of nineteen and had to “buy” a new crew at $25 a head. He wrote home, ‘The men are often enticed away by a money payment or a drink and shipped away the same night in a drunken state.” Captain Ewart of the Australasian thought (wrongly) that the crimps had even the British Consul in San Francisco buffaloed in this respect—“The men leave their ships usually enticed by the boardinghouse people. Neither the authorities nor the British Consul take any steps to prevent this.” But the fault lay with weaklivered owners and masters, not the Consul. Captain John Hughes was typical of the former. He admitted, “I have never come into conflict with crimps, as experience has shown me that those who do, pay very dearly for it in the long run.” This weakness made the crimps bolder than ever. When the S.S. Ventnor came in the bay, her master reported, “Myself and my officers have been constantly threatened by them openly, as to what they will do to us when they get a chance.” (He would not play ball with the crimps.)

  How thoroughly cowed were many lime-juicers is demonstrated by what T. W. Everton, a lay reader of the Seamen’s Institute, found when he boarded the Liverpool ship Stronsa in 1902. He looked in the forecastle. “There were runners galore, roughly counting, perhaps half a dozen, who were talking to the men, evidently trying to persuade them to leave the ship, and not gently, either. I witnessed one man by the name of W. Simonsen who was helped along the deck with his bag, an armful of clothing, seaboots, &c. One method of persuading the men to desert was the generous supply of whiskey with a promise of a job ashore or on the Coast at $50 per month, and a dollar in his pocket. Among the runners was one from the Sailors’ Home who left his card in the forecastle and told the men not to go to a boardinghouse but to come to the Sailors’ Home. He secured two men with the aid of whiskey. The names of the runners on board were Tom Murray, Canes, Hansen, McCarthy and Webb.

  “I shook hands with some of the men and told them on no account to leave the ship, as it meant ruination if they did. Hansens’s runner then said, ‘Are you the second mate? Have a drink!’ At the same time he showed a flask of whiskey and then he started hooting, evidendy at me. So I then said, “This game will have to stop,’ and left the forecastle and walked aft with Murray at my heels, swearing, and when he got up to me, within hearing of the captain, he said, ‘Look here, what business have you got on board? Who are you? You are only here to make money out of sailors’ And, swearing again, he said, ‘I’ll have you thrown over the side! Or, if I catch you in the forecastle again, I’ll do you up!’ And he shook his fist at me….”

  Everton watched Murray herd two drunks into a boat, and then held services for about twelve men. He got the British Consul, Captain Jones, and Simonsen to go to the Hall of Justice, and there warrants were sworn for Murray and Hansen. But they were soon released on a $300 bond each.

  But the shocking thing about Everton’s report was how thoroughly the crimps could buffalo a tough lime-juicer. The captain let them take over the Stronsa; he was afraid to intervene to protect Everton; he did not even dare hoist the police flag, though his mate suggested it.

  Chandler did not have all the contracts for San Francisco. Some of the British firms dealt with a lower-class crimp, Scab Johnnie, described by Consul Bennett as “an unsavory shipping master with the name of Savory.” He would let them have men for only $5 a head. He was a price cutter. Bennett was convinced that this collusion and cowardice could be terminated. “If owners really wanted to stop desertions they should instruct masters to keep runners out of the ships.” He supposed they knew the U.S. Treasury Regulation: “The keeper, runner or any agent of a sailors’ lodging house or any person soliciting seamen for any purpose should not in any case be allowed to board any vessel until such dock or anchorage where cargo to be discharged is reached.” He knew that they knew of the California law which made enticing to desert punishable with a fine of $500 and a term of six months in jail. “And yet,” Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul General in San Francisco wrote, “I have proof that day after day, runners are to be found on certain British ships, both in the stream and at the dock, urging men to desert and they are not ordered by masters to leave. And the fact is not reported to me. Yet these masters have written orders from their owners not to allow runners and crimps on board. They will move neither hand nor foot to stop the traffic.”

  But all of this violence and graft which alarmed and shocked the British Government, as well as our own, was but one last grand outburst of shanghaiing. The age of sail was dying. Protective legislation was on the books or on the way. The “Red Record” and other reports had swung public opinion against the crimps. Finally, the earthquake and fire of April 1906 in Frisco would wipe out the shanghaiing warrens of the city. And they would never be rebuilt. Times had changed. The day of the crimp was over. He just went out with a bang, or a tremor, in San Francisco.

  John Hay and the United States Government were convinced by 1900 that crimping was on the decline. Hay felt that no new legislation was even needed. The Attorney General ordered all U.S. Attorneys in Portland, Oregon, New York, Baltimore, Seattle, Philadelphia and San Francisco to enforce rigorously all pertinent statutes and to eradicate crimping. The British Consul in San Francisco soon began to receive more co-operation from the police. In 1902 Chief Whitman offered to help with the actual prosecution of crimps. Soon British and other shipmasters were no longer fearful of standing up in court from threats of personal violence by crimps.

  The Liverpool Shipowners’ Association sent William Lewis to the San Francisco Consulate in the fall of 1902 to talk over plans for creating a watchdog position at 1, 600 pounds sterling a year—“a minimum salary in such an expensive city as San Francisco”—to stamp out collusion between masters and crimps. A Mr. Barneson approached the Association about getting the post, but he left S. F. hurriedly. There appeared to be something shady about him, and Consul Be
nnett thought his appointment would have resulted in “no more good being done than were the post given to a leading crimp.”

  There was talk of salvaging a retired British admiral for title watchdog post but it was never necessary to fill the position. The crimp was losing his grip so fast on the San Francisco water front that by 1906 he was already practically part of the ancient history of the port, though his requiem would not be written until Andy Furuseth got his Seamen’s Bill passed in 1915.

  6. Other Shanghai Ports

  IF FRISCO was the Queen of America’s shanghaiing cities—and she most certainly was—then Portland, Oregon, was her hoyden lady-in-waiting. Late in the game, Portland even passed San Francisco in notoriety when seamen’s conditions in the latter city were rectified by the “cloud pusher” Andy Furuseth.

  But other maritime cities were not far behind in notoriety. On the Pacific Coast, the worst ports after San Francisco and Portland were Astoria, Port Townsend, Tacoma and San Pedro. On the East Coast, New York easily led the way, followed by Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The Sailors’ Magazine of New York in March 1851 said, “In almost every American port, as soon as a clipper reaches dock, the seamen are surrounded by a gang of miscreants calling themselves boardinghouse operators who get paid for every customer they bring to the house. The innocent and dry Jack Tars are in most cases plied with bad liquor, slugged and robbed by landlords and prostitutes and eventually returned to the ship for a fee. It is a sorry mess for ships’ officers who are hoping for a good crew, for even the best-intentioned sailors are soon debauched and ruined by the unholy landlords, terrible liquor and worse women. So, when they awake on board ship, broke and with bashed heads, their grudge is usually against the ship’s captain and mates.”