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

  In Port Townsend, Washington, somehow the sailors got a manslaughter charge to stick. Smith, first mate of the Benjamin Sewell, was handed one year in prison and a thousand-dollar fine for causing the suicide of William Marr. But this case was the exception which proved the rule—the rule that buckosim would be excused as “discipline.” In a long calendar of horrors, almost monotonously the same, Macarthur listed the hellships Bohemia, Iroquois, John McDonald, M. P. Grace, May Flint, and others. But again and again the courts came back with “insufficient evidence,” “case dismissed,” “no malice, hatred or revenge proven,” “justifiable discipline,” and “conflict of testimony” in exculpation of masters and mates guilty of gross brutality. On the Charles F. Crocker the mate was excused for assault on the pot-rassler because “discipline must be maintained and the cook’s punishment was merited.” In the case of the George Stetson, First Mate Harvey’s assault was dismissed as simply “pushing.” When Johnson, first officer of the John A. Briggs, broke a man’s nose and dislocated his arm, the assault was dismissed because after all, “a ship’s officer has the right to beat a refractory seaman.” When the courts did produce a conviction, as in the case of Captain Killman of the Lyman D. Foster, the spanking was gentle. Killman, thanks to a recommendation of mercy, got only a $25 fine and costs.

  On November 27, 1895, Macarthur announced in the Journal that the Union was issuing the “Red Record” in pamphlet form as a supplement to that issue of the paper, that copies of the twenty-four-page brochure would be placed in the hands of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, and that copies would be submitted to the American press for national publicity. Something drastic had to be done. As Macarthur noted, “So far, the law, the courts and the press have failed to effect any perceptible check upon brutality to seamen; in fact, the very laxity of these forces has had the opposite effect. Buckoism is steadily increasing. At the moment of this writing, and since the ‘Red Record’ was closed, several cases have been reported….

  “We believe that no matter what a man’s feelings may be, whether actuated by humanitarian or merely business motives, the effect of the ‘Red Record’ will be to stir up a public feeling equal to the abolition of the disgraceful system of brutality to seamen.

  “Something must be done to wipe out this shameful blot upon an honorable calling…. In the name of justice and humanity we call upon our readers to do what lies in their power, particularly by making the facts widely known, toward the abolition of the seagoing Legrees!”

  The response was immediate and most heartening. Not only did seamen get a good hearing in Congress, where friends like La Follette and Maguire made much headway, but also among the people at large, via their presses. The Daily Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Maine, was shocked to see that of sixty-four cases mentioned in the booklet, thirty-six concerned either State of Maine vessels or Mainemen. (The nearest thing Uncle Sam had to the notorious Nova Scotian bluenose buckos were Mainemen, of course.) San Francisco had cause for shame, too. Of the sixty-four cases, forty were reported in San Francisco and only sixteen were ever brought before a Commissioner and only one of these was resolved completely in favor of the crew.

  The San Francisco Call summarized a committee report of the Institute of Applied Christianity, which had inquired into the truth and accuracy of the sensational and horrifying “Red Record.” The recommendation of the committee was that a circular letter be sent to all clergy in the United States to apprise them of the sufferings of merchant seamen. “Our committee of investigation reports that the charges in the ‘Red Record’ are true and supported by facts, the more revolting features being suppressed out of regard for decency.”

  Papers all over the country—the New York Press, the San Francisco Bulletin, the New York Journal, the Oakland Daily News, the Minneapolis Record, and others—called their readers’ attention to the shameful situation on America’s merchant ships. Only a handful attacked the “Red Record,” and these were usually organs representing vested interests of shipowners. The Marine Journal (New York) was one such hostile paper. The Twentieth Century said that American buckoism equaled the Spanish Inquisition in cruelty, and the majority of newspapers were of a similar opinion. To feel the pulse of national reaction, you need only to read the headlines—“Rapacity and Brutality,” “Brutalizing Conditions,” “Abuse and Blackguardism,” “A Crime of the Century,” “Brutes Without Pity or Remorse,” “Equals the Inquisition,” “Slavery and Serfdom,” “Atrociously Inhuman Brutality,” and “A Tale of Horror,” The Veskusten of San Francisco called the brutal officers “sea bears.” The little Hayes Valley Advertiser in just five words of a headline summed up the entire history of American merchant seamen—“Beaten Afloat and Robbed Ashore.”

  One of the worst offenders, Captain Robert J. Graham of the W. F. Babcock, sailed from Honolulu about the time of the “Red Record” pamphlet. The Babcock and Graham had already been reported in the “Red Record” columns of the Journal four times. The Hawaiian press predicted murder and mutiny on the outward-bound vessel since sixteen of the eighteen crewmen, plus the cook and steward, had deserted upon arrival in Hawaii. Even more ominously, the newly recruited men refused to sign ship’s articles. Hawaiian shipping laws were ransacked and the harshest provisions sought out. Deserters from the Tillie E. Starbuck, the Arago and the W. F. Babcock herself were arrested, thrown in jail and marched aboard. (And yet one man made his escape by diving overboard and swimming ashore through the surf rather than sail with Graham.) When Macarthur learned that Graham had pummeled a sailor on the head with a pair of handcuffs, ranting “You lime-juice son of a bitch, take that, and that, and that!” he predicted in the Journal that the Captain might “find his mouth under his chin” (that is, his throat cut) before he reached New York.

  On January 26, 1898, Macarthur once again reprinted, with additions, the “Red Record” in the columns of the Coast Seamen’s Journal. At the same time he editorialized on the “story of shame” which it was. He admitted that some people and some newspapers had charged the “Red Record” as being “lurid and sensational.” But, he insisted, “We have endeavored to prove the cases cited... [and] with due regard for the amenities of printed language, we have carefully excluded the most repulsive details of the cases. As the Red Record stands, it is a conservative statement….”

  He went into details for any doubters. All the cases cited occurred in a period of only ten years. It was a selective, partial list. Fifteen deaths were involved, all of them murders in Macarthur’s eyes. There were numberless instances of losses of teeth, limbs and eyes, and permanent injuries to sailors. And there were only seven convictions. In all other cases, defendants were exonerated of the charge, or the case was dismissed. He reminded the public of the frequent “disappearance” of officers in port to escape justice and of the frequent recurrence of certain ships and officers in the “Red Record,” ships like the W. F. Babcock and the T. F. Oakes. The Scot pointed out that the severest penalty handed down was in the case of the first officer, Smith, of the Benjamin Sewell. He drew a year’s imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. The second-highest penalty was a mere $100 fine; the others were closer to $25. In no case was assault denied, yet cases were dismissed, right and left, on either technical, legal grounds or on the all-inclusive excuse of “discipline.”

  Walter Macarthur looked forward to the day when “the traditions of American liberty and justice may no longer be violated where they should be held most sacred—on the decks of the American ship.” His (and Mackay’s) creation and distribution of the “Red Record” was a master stroke. By winning widespread support from the public for the sailor’s position, he assured eventual victory in the fight for seamen’s rights.

  But it must not be thought that the Coast Seamen’s Journal was nothing more than the “Red Record” and a Poet’s Corner. It was a lively, informative and powerful organ for the Union. It boasted occasional humor and frequent sarcasm, as when Macar
thur editorialized about boardinghouse keepers whining about unpaid bills—“According to the boarding-master’s story, he has been running his business at a loss for years. Manifestly, he was either wealthy when he started in business and continues it for the fun of the thing, or his story is exaggerated.”

  When he noted that a certain bucko mate was on the verge of tears in court during his trial, he grumped, “These slobberings testify to the whiteness of the bucko’s liver.”

  When McNichols, mate of the Harry Morse, and Elwell, chief knocker of the Dirigo, both had brutality charges against them dismissed in 1897, Macarthur protested: “If a bucko kills a seaman, he cannot be held for trial because ‘no official charge’ has been made and the dead man is the only one who can make it. If a ship’s crew are corralled by the crimps, the case must be dismissed for ‘lack of evidence’ notwithstanding the witnesses may be in a saloon just around the corner. If a seaman appears in court with a yard of sticking plaster on his face and avers he saw stars when he was hit, the case is thrown out on the ground of contradicting evidence because the ship’s log shows that the night was cloudy.”

  Letters to the editor were welcomed, like the one Hartweg C. Tambs, an ex-sailor, wrote to describe the voyage of the Louisiana from Baltimore to San Francisco in 1886. The second mate, aged eighteen, was as green as Galway. But he was Captain Oliver’s son, so he felt he had to throw his weight around. Although he could not splice a rope himself, he ordered a Filipino to do so and when the Manilaman did not do it fast enough to suit Junior, he beat him with a belaying pin. As Tambs observed, “This goes to show the incompetence of American officers in seamanship and their competence as martinets. You cannot expect any better treatment as long as American ships’ officers are composed of Liverpool bootblacks and American hoodlums.”

  Another typically strong contribution was that of Dr. Lorimer, an “eminent divine” of Boston, who had to speak out when he heard of the happenings on the Britisher, Warrior, on its Rio-to-Boston passage. The captain set his wolfhound on the crew. The bosun, supposedly dead of fever, was sewed up and dumped hurriedly over the side—alive. The mate, a bluenose from Pictou, Nova Scotia, was as mean as all Nova Scotians and a living proof of the sailors’ contention that “The highest ambition of these ‘half-breed buckos’ is to be called Yankees.”

  Dr. Lorimer wrote: “I have sailed before the mast as well as in the cabin and I have seen the men kicked, cuffed and beaten with a belaying pin. These men appear in a consul’s office, tell their story, show the marks of the wolf-hound’s fangs, and are advised to quietly accept their pay and a discharge. I believe I only do my duty when I protest against the solemn farce of justice meted out in this way, simply because the men are poor, ignorant sailors.”

  The Journal proved to be an open window through which all of America, thanks to the “Red Record,” could see the ugly world of the sailor. Americans began to understand why young Yankee sailors came to hate the sight of Old Glory; the Stars and Stripes to these men stood for the stars before their eyes after a clubbing, and the stripes on their backs after a whipping with a rope’s end.

  As more and more battles were won in Washington, the importance of the Journal declined. Eventually, and unfortunately, Furuseth and his right-hand man, Macarthur, had a falling out and did not speak to each other for years. Macarthur went on to become U.S. Shipping Commissioner in San Francisco in 1913. He had served the Union in one capacity or another from May 11, 1891, until June 1913. When he resigned from the editorship of the Coast Seamen’s Journal, the members of the Union had a handsome resolution of honor made up for him. It thanked him on behalf of the Union for “distinguished services rendered and loyalty and devotion shown to the cause of seamen,” and saluted his efforts “in the struggle to obtain justice for those who toil.”

  Macarthur was a Depression casualty. When the Federal Government cut back on its roster in 1932, Walter Macarthur was forced to retire from his post as Shipping Commissioner. The Sacramento Bee, in deploring the Government’s putting a man of talent and vigor into the ash can, described it as a “damned-phool” act.

  Quite a bit of the credit for the emancipation of American seamen is due Walter Macarthur, the Glasgow-born sailor educated in Anderson University. A veteran of ten years’ service in the British merchant service (1876-1886) and five years in the American merchant marine (1886-1891), he brought to the Journal the ring of authority and authenticity. He knew of what he spoke and wrote. Perhaps it would not be unseemly to ask for him a share of the praise showered on the one man who actually did more than he for the sailor, his forever friend and sometime enemy, Andy Furuseth. Perhaps what Fiorello LaGuardia said of Furuseth can also be said of Macarthur: “He was a great soul. He lived to benefit others…. If there is today an American seaman who can retain the dignity of a citizen, it is because of him.”

  8. Tomorrow Is Also a Day

  THE lusty squalling of a baby in a peasant’s hut in 1854 signaled the beginning of the end for the world’s hellships and its land sharks.

  The place was Furuseth or Furusethstua (“Furuseth Cottage”) on the southeast outskirts of Romedal, in the province of Hedmark, which lies some fifty miles north of Oslo, Norway. There, in a rustic cabin on the east shore of Lake Mjösa, on March 12th, Marthe Jensdatter, wife of a peat-bog worker, Andreas Nilsen, gave birth to a son. They named him Anders and, according to Sandmavian custom, he was known by the name of his birthplace rather than by his father’s last name. The infant Anders became Anders (later, Andrew) Furuseth.

  There was no particular excitement in the Nilsen household that day. After all, Anders was the fifth child. Marthe was an old hand at childbearing and child raising. She and her husband had no reason to think that there was anything special about the baby who joined them that spring. The couple could not dream that one day, fifty years and more later, people would call their son “the Lincoln of the sea.” or that a famous California novelist would dub him, and not in jest, “St. Andrew the Sailor.” How could these sturdy peasants imagine that their son would be revered and would be the subject of eulogies contributed by men from all walks of life?

  In 1855 Ander’s family moved to Damstua (“Cottage-by-the-Dam”) where his father was given the job of overseeing the embankments of the dam which formed Lake Gjetholmsjodammen. And here, as the years passed, five more children were born into abject, grinding poverty. Stretch Papa Nilsen’s wage as much as she could, Marthe simply could not feed adequately a brood of ten hungry young ones, even on fish and potatoes dipped into herring sauce. The children’s scant ration of bread was eked by Ander’s mother mixing tree bark with the wheaten flour. They kept a cow and a sheep, and Father did his best to augment their rations by hunting moose and other game and by fishing. As seems so often to be the case with people of such hardy stock as this Norse family, everyone thrived on this coarse and sparse diet. Ander’s father lived to be over ninety; Anders died at eighty-four; five of his siblings were also octogenarians.

  When Anders was eight years old, he had to go out into the world and earn his keep. He was sent to Ostby where he lived from his eighth to his fifteenth year and where he worked for his bread with a farmer, Jonas S. Schjotz. According to some Norwegian accounts, Schjotz was a kindly man who arranged for young Anders to enter into the local parish school. According to others, he beat Anders for stopping work just long enough to get a drink of water and the boy never forgot the humiliation or the physical beating of that day. In any case, his brief schooling was a revelation to Anders. He had a good mind. (In 1912 Senator Robert La Follette would say, “He was one of the most intelligent men I have ever met.”) He became an assistant to Cantor Hansen in the nearby church, and when he was confirmed in the Lutheran Church in 1869 his rating on Knowledge was described as “Good.”

  On June 2, 1870, his mother packed him some food and bade him good-by as he left for the capital and the world. He visited his sister,
Inger, at the Ajer farm and then walked across the ice of Norway’s largest lake, Lake NjSsa, to Gjovik. There he got a lift in a wagon to the railroad station of Dal where he caught a train to Christiana, now Oslo. Anders clerked in a grocery store for a time on the island of Tjome in Oslof jord, then enrolled in the military corps in the capital, joining a training school for noncommissioned officers. He hoped to be able to enter the War School, Norway’s West Point Although he had a good mind and he studied hard under friends’ coaching, Anders was rejected. He swallowed his disappointment, however, and put his knowledge and facility with languages to work. Soon, extra money was coming in from his translating of English, German, Dutch, and French for commercial purposes.

  The year 1873 was a critical one for Furuseth. He turned his back on farm, city and the military, and decided to follow the sea. He was just nineteen years old. There seemed more future on the wide sea than in any of the other avenues open to a poor Norwegian boy in the seventies. He would be a free seaman, he thought. He found himself, instead, a chattel owned by the master of the ship. At that time, the existing maritime law made a seaman the property of the vessel on which he sailed, like a cask or a hawser. He once told Senator La Follette, “I saw men abused, beaten into insensibility. I saw sailors try to escape from brutal masters and from unseaworthy vessels upon which they had been lured to serve. I saw them hunted down and thrown into the ship’s hold in chains. I knew the bitterness of it all from experience.” There is a story, too, that on one of his early voyages, Furuseth was stricken with fever in the Indian Ocean. Though he could hardly stand, the brutal mate forced him to continue working. Finally he was exhausted. He crawled to his bunk in the crowded, filthy fo’c’sle and lay down. He determined not to get up until his fever broke. He lay facing outward on the bed with a knife in one hand. He was going to kill the mate if he so much as touched him. Furuseth recovered after being delirious for a long period of time. He was then ashamed of his intention to murder the mate, who luckily had made no attempt to rouse him. It was then he realized that the knife was no solution. Seamen must band together to put an end to the intolerable life of servitude they suffered. Then and there, in that dirty forecastle, he began what the Reverend James C. Healey was to call his “crusade for the deliverance of seamen from legal bondage.”