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- "Shanghaied" redirects here. See also the SpongeBob SquarePants episode.
Shanghaiing was the act of forcibly conscripting someone to serve a term working on a ship, usually after having been rendered senseless by alcohol, drugs or a sharp blow to the head . The term was mainly used on the west coast of the United States. Any friendless man in port cities like San Francisco, Portland and Astoria, Oregon, and Seattle and Port Townsend, Washington was in danger of being "shanghaied" (an American slang that has since expanded to a generic term for any sort of trick). Portland is especially notable because of the elaborate tunnel system used to transport shanghaied men known as the shanghai tunnels.
Unscrupulous ship's captains frequently availed themselves of this form of unfree labor, employing stratagems 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 same as those put off. 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, and the groups of large, burly men they often hired as helpers were known as crimp gangs, or press gangs in reference to United Kingdom warship impressment. 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 it.
The word "shanghai" comes from the city of Shanghai, in China. This terminology originated because Shanghai was a common destination of the ships likely to use shanghaied labor, and because Shanghai (being distant) was an unfortunate destination to be shanghaied for.
Bibliography
- Stewart Holbrook, "Bunco Kelly, King of the Crimps" in Wildmen, Wobblies 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.
- Bill Pickelhaupt, "Shanghaied in San Francisco," San Francisco: Flyblister Press, 1996. ISBN 0-9647312-2-3
See also
"Shanghaiing"