Shanghai (verb)

To say a man had been shanghaied in the late 19th century, did not mean he had undertaken upon a journey to Shanghai in China, although he might be at sea for as long as a journey to that seaport might require. Instead, it came to refer to the fact that he had been conscripted to serve a term working on a ship, sometimes by force, but more typically after having been rendered senseless either by alcohol or drugs. It was a constant danger waiting any friendless man in port cities like San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.

Unscrupulous ship's captains frequently availed themselves of this form of unfree labor, employing strategems to force their crews to desert in ports before they had been paid off, then to replace the deserters with shanghaied men -- who in some cases were the one and the same. Sometimes the seamen would find themselves shanghaied onto another vessel even before they had set foot on dry land, and might find themselves working for years with nothing to show for their labors.

The men who engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. The most infamous examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland. Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some have survived into print due to their rough humor. One such example involves the "birthday party" Shanghai Kelly threw for himself, in order to attract enough victims to man a notorious sailing ship named the Reefer and two other ships. Another was how Bunco Kelly passed a wooden Indian off to a desperate ship's captain as the last needed man.

The practice of shanghaiing men was not limited to Pacific ports, but due to the efforts of Samuel Plimsoll, the United Kingdom passed the Merchant Shipping Act in 1876, which severely curtailed the practice. Demand for manpower to keep ships sailing to Alaska and the Klondike kept this a real danger in American ports into the early 20th century, when with the help of Andrew Furuseth, Senator Robert LaFollette pushed through legislation in 1915 that made this practice a federal crime, and finally put an end to this practice.

Bibliography

• Stewart Holbrook, "Bunco Kelly, King of the Crimps" in Wildmen, Wobllies and Whistle Punks. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87071-383-3
• Samuel Dickson, "Shanghai Kelly", Tales of San Francisco Stanford: University Press, 1957.