Shanghaied in San Francisco 0964731207

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Shanghaied

in

San Francisco

Bill

Pickelhaupi

Foreword by Kevin Starr

Shanghaied in San Francisco by

Bill

Pickelhaupt

From the time of the American takeover of the young town of Yerba Buena from Mexico, desertion of sailors at that outpost

of

civi-

was a problem. After the town became San Francisco and the word of gold reached the outside world, it was impossible to keep a crew aboard ship— everyone headed for the lization

diggings.

Men and women

started

boardinghouses and an understanding was arrived at between these boardinghouse

sailors'

keepers and the merchant community running the city that the former were allowed a free hand in recruiting sailors to replace those who deserted. The abuses of this practice lead to the system of shanghaiing. From early practitioners

such as James "Jimmy The

Drummer" Laflin and James "Shanghai" Kelly, shanghaiing continued for over six decades in the city by the Bay. John "Shanghai Chicken" Devine became

a household word as the 1860s drew to a close— and fulfilled a policeman's prophecy by finishing his days at the end of a rope. Henry "Shanghai"

Brown,

Harry

"Horseshoe" "Shanghai" Nelson kept the business of recruiting sailors a seedy one. San Francisco earned its reputation of being the "worst crimp-

Brown and

Nils

ing city in the world." continued on back flap

ST.

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Shanghaied

in

San Francisco

Bill

Pickelhaupt

Judith Robinson, Editor

/

y&^/< Flyblister Press San Francisco,

California

1896

° 1996 by Bill Pickelhaupt. All rights may be reproduced or used in any form, or by any

All text, as excepted below, copyright reserved.

No

portion

means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Flyblister Press

acknowledges the following for granting permission

to reprint

items as indicated:

American in the Rough, by William M. Coffman, ® 1955 by Simon-Schuster. Copyright reverted to Mr. Coffman in 1960. San Francisco Maritime Museum N.H.P.: For use of oral histories gathered by Pearl D. Coffman:

Jack McNairn in 1959 and 1960 and later transcribed. These transcribed accounts form the basis for first-hand stories of shanghaiing.

Sea Breezes magazine: "Liverpool to Melbourne and 'Frisco About the Year 1875," by Sackville Smyth, July 1937 issue. University of California at Berkeley Oral History Office: Recollections of the

San Francisco Waterfront, by Thomas Crowley, Sr. Interviewed by Willa Klug Bauni and Karl Kortum, University of California Press, 1967.

A good

been made to acquire permission for use of quotations of material by John H. (Jack) Shickell and drawings by Gordon Grant. faith effort has

Original source of front cover art in a

March 1962

Back cover

art is

article

work unknown. The line-drawing appeared

of Westways magazine by Richard H. Dillon.

from the shipping

departed San Francisco

articles for the ship

November

advertisement for Goin

14, 1856.

& Ellis,

Kate Hooper, which

The drawing was an

shipping masters.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96781 First printed

10

December 1996

987654321

Printed in the United States of America

draws its name from an old four-person rowboat, made of paper, owned by a San Francisco rowing club in the 1880s. A wag, seeing the peeled paint of the craft, dubbed her the Flyblister. The boat was very fast due Flyblister Press

to its light weight,

and carried her crews

to

numerous

victories.

Flyblister Press 1706 Irving

Street,

San Francisco, Ca. 94122

Acknowledgments Writing a book about an eighty years ago

is

illegal activity

which ended over

a difficult proposition at best. Fortunately a

wealth of assistance became available as the project unfolded.

The

the

was afforded by David Hull and his staff at San Francisco Maritime Museum Library. David made the greatest help

wonderful collection of the library available to

many hours

me

and spent

The mere existence of that library was of the utmost importance when the San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch was closed while the bulk of my research was under way. Nancy Olmsted's encouragement and insight into San Francisco's waterfront history were invaluable tools. Her knowledge discussing problems with the project.

of and collection of photographs were equally invaluable to me. Stan Carroll of the San Francisco History

Room

at the city's

Main branch made a very valuable suggestion when

—

for a topic

the Barbary Coast.

While

my

I

searched

research followed the

path of shanghaiing, his idea helped tremendously. Thanks in large

measure go

to Stan's brilliant staff for their enthusiastic

support, especially Pat Akre's assistance with photographs.

Steve Canright of the National Maritime

Museum

is

owed a

huge debt of gratitude for pointing out the transcripts of Jack

McNairn's Robert

oral histories.

MacKimmie

helped with

initial

design and located

key photographs from the collection of the California Historical

HI

SHANGHAIED

Society, while keeping up his

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

own

hectic schedule.

Thank you,

Robert. Judith Robinson played a very big role in the data

I

Her organizational

gathered.

making sense of

efforts helped pull

it

all

together.

ics'

The Bancroft Library assisted with photographs and MechanLibrary staff was very patient with my continued requests to

Amy

look at their collection of San Francisco City Directories.

Holloway

at the

African- American

Museum

of San Francisco

provided information on John T. Callender.

Thanks

to

Archie Green for pointing out the

art

work which

graces the front cover.

Malcolm book.

Bill

Schneebeli,

E. Barker contributed significantly to design of this

Secrest,

Mike

Walt

John Boessenacker, Kevin Mullen,

Griffith of the United States District Court,

Charles Fracchia, Dr. Albert Shumate and

Dan Bacon

all

made

important contributions. Special thanks to Kevin Starr.

Diane

showed me stamp of

Laflin

made

a

significant

the Laflin Record.

reality

and truth

The

contribution

when

she

Laflin Record confers the

to the entire

work.

Last but by no means least, Courtney S. Clarkson deserves special recognition for encouraging

me

search, particularly for an earlier work.

am

indebted to you.

IV

to pursue historical re-

Thank you, Courtney.

I

Table of Contents Page

Acknowledgments

111-1V

List of Illustrations

vi-viii

Foreword

ix-x

Preface

xi-xiii

Introduction

xiv-xvi

Chaos on the Waterfront The Boardinghouse Masters Organize Latter Days of the Boardinghouse Gang First Hand Accounts of Shanghaied Sailors

1-27

Whitehall Boatmen Politics

Among

the Shanghaiers

28-73

74-97

98-123 124-165

166-179

Economics Overcome the Law Appendix: James Laflin and the Shipping of Whaling Men

212-231

Glossary

232-235

Bibliography

236-241

Index

242-250

180-211

Illustrations Page Harbor police pursue shanghaiers

3

Vallejo Street Wharf, 1863, with sailors'

7

boardinghouses Vallejo Street in 1867

8

The Old Ship Saloon Eric 0. Lindblom

14

Shipping Articles, 1856

23

boxing togs

28

Chandler

A

in

19

typical crimp/ "Sometimes force is

31

necessary"

Arctic Oil Works, with cable cars under

35

construction

36

Ship Southern Cross

John Curtin's boardinghouse, demolished Billy

by a bomb Dwyer, bare-knuckle boxer and Barbary Coast saloon keeper

Tommy

40 45

Chandler vs. Dooney Harris

52

boxing match

The Lick House

54

John "Shanghai Chicken" Devine

55

The Chicken loses his hand The paddle steamer Wilson G. Hunt

61

City

jail,

Portsmouth Square

Downeasters

at the foot

of Telegraph Hill

VI

68

69 74

Illustrations

Joseph "Frenchy" Franklin

77

Boxing referee and crimp Billy Jordan The Bank Exchange Saloon where

77

Duncan Nichol dispensed Pisco Punch Sabatie letter searching for Henry Jobet Harry "Horseshoe" Brown

79 82 83

Police officer and former boardinghouse

keeper

Thomas R. Langford

Shipping master Fred

J.

Hunt

87

87

Battery Street, near "Lime-Juice" Corner

91

Ship Battle Abbey

93

Black

sailors'

boardinghouse operator

John T. Callender

93

Bad Whiskey and Blood-Money The Men Behind Crowley's Fleet "Lime- Juice" Corner Whaler Jeanette Whaler Narwhal

98

John R. Savory, a.k.a. "Scab Johnny"

111

Bells of

Shandon Saloon, Mr. Brewer proprietor

Valentine Kehrlein,

Hotel

Crowley,

110 111

1

15

118

Emil Kehrlein, proprietor, Hotel Nymphia

Tom

105

Jr., proprietor,

Nymphia

Dave Crowley,

101

Sr., at Sr., in

119

Meiggs Wharf

124

1898

124

Whitehall boatman Robert Gibson

128

Dave Crowley, Sr. "hooking-on" Abe Warner's Cobweb Palace

131

Whitehall sailing race

136

Single Whitehall, with Interior of

sail

137

up

John Twigg's boatbuilding shop

The Desmond brothers rowing C.C.

Stutz, butcher,

134

141

146

and

"Jack the Ripper's" boss

Vll

146

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Whitehall hooked-on to the Marlborough Hill Billy

149

and Harry's Saloon, 1904

Gordon Grant whaling scenes Whitehall boatman and professional oarsman Henry Peterson The Desmond brothers sailing Oarsman Fred Plaisted, 1878 Whale Hunters on Howard Street Wharf Funeral of officers Dakin and Hennessy at Hall

147 152, 153

156

159 159 165

166

of Records

Chris Buckley in fire department uniform

171

Alex Greggains, Buckley's bodyguard and life-long friend

171

174

Republican boss Martin Kelly Fire department boss

Sam Rainey

175

Thomas W. Chandler

Tommy

175

and Hans Hansen

180

Chandler, circa 1900

184

Billy Clark

General B. Griffin Barney, Deputy

Shipping Commissioner Street scene at

504 Battery

188

Street,

1879-80

Amazon Andrew Furuseth, Coast Seamen's Ship

Union leader

189 193 195

Steuart Street sailors' boardinghouse

198

Former Board of Supervisors member Stewart Menzies Former Board of Supervisors member

204

John T. Sullivan

The

Sailor's

Home on

Rincon

204 Hill

Choosing whaling crews Young America Saloon and clothier Harris' shop on Drumm Street

Vlll

205

212 215

Foreword Today, and large

after long struggle, the question of civil rights

in the

by

is

consciousness of most Americans. Hence the city

described by Bill Pickelhaupt in this vivid, well-researched narrative seems, in

men

one sense,

away. The

light years

fact that free

of America or other nationalities could be enticed, drugged,

then shanghaied into what amounted to penal servitude before the

mast for indefinite periods of time seems, belong to another and very remote era.

book appears, cases regarding immigrants

in

like slavery itself, to

And

yet,

even as

this

the enforced servitude of Asian

Southern California sweatshops are pending before

The question of enforced remains a pressing issue in many

the courts.

servitude, even slavery

self,

parts of the world. In vari-

it-

ous forms, the practice of shanghaiing has not become a thing of the past.

For

all its

sordid illegality, the culture and practice of shang-

haiing—the boardinghouses, the saloons, the dance dellos,

the

crimps themselves,

the

swiftly

halls

sailing

and bor-

Whitehalls

which serviced the ships— was an established part of the culture of old San Francisco. Indeed, as Pickelhaupt demonstrates, the official

establishment of the city and

way when

its

political bosses

came

had a

what was in effect the kidnapping and enslavement of working men. The culture of shanghaiing, moreover, was but one part of the harsh exploitation of maritime labor on the Pacific Coast which continued tendency to look the other

into the twentieth century.

IX

it

to

SHANGHAIED

Organized

in

March 1885

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

in

San Francisco, the Coast Sea-

men's Union fought the exploitation of maritime labor as best

it

Union joined the SteamSailors Union of the Pacific,

could. In July 1891 the Coast Seamen's ship Sailors

Union

to

which elected former

form the sailor

Andrew Furuseth

to

its

presidency.

For the next quarter of a century ensued the struggle

to correct

such abuses as the beating of sailors, the frequent defrauding of

wages and shanghaiing itself. Not until Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin introduced the Seamen's Act into Congress, which was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson on Mach 4, 1915, were the last vestiges of enforced servitude outlawed on American ships. Meanwhile, there flourished in San Francisco, the rough, rowdy, frequently violent and sometimes colorful world described by Bill Pickelhaupt in this engaging book. Writers such as Frank Norris and Jack London found in the shanghaiing culture of the port of San Francisco a world of elemental brutality— yet vivid drama. Today, San Francisco prides itself on its identity as a world-renowned center for the arts, dining, retail and other amenities. It is important to remember, however, that this city of refinement came into being and passed its middle years as a bareknuckled Pacific port. Assembling the historical materials of this era and fashioning them into narrative, Bill Pickelhaupt helps us understand San Francisco in a new light. sailors

author of the Americans and the

Kevin Starr California Dream series

Preface

Shanghaiing. The word carries a power which frightens and fascinates.

about

It

attracts

this practice

and repulses

us.

But

how much do we know

which supposedly thrived on San Francisco's

waterfront in the 19th century? I

came

across the subject of shanghaiing in 1994 while writ-

book about the old rowing clubs of San Francisco. There seemed to be murky connections with shanghaiing and the Whitehall boatmen who were early members of some of these clubs. How widespread was the practice of shanghaiing? Could shanghaiing exist without the assistance of San Francisco's poliing a small

ticians?

I

decided to investigate further.

Using Richard H. Dillon's Shanghaiing Days as a guide,

names of

sailors'

boardinghouse keepers were identified. Retail

clothiers along the waterfront

were also involved

in

providing

men as sailors, willingly or otherwise. Then a photograph of a man who was a bare-knuckle boxer and boardinghouse keeper fleshed out the picture. The man, Thomas Chandler, not only shanghaied sailors and fought bare-knuckle bouts, he served on

San Francisco Democratic County Committee for over thirty years. Then shanghaiers who had terms in the California State

the

Assembly and Senate revealed themselves. They spent more terms in the state legislature than in San Quentin. I was on to something.

XI

SHANGHAIED

The

incentive to shanghai

by shipowners through

women who

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

men was

and captains

their agents

man

supplied sailors to

asked— present a body and

the advance

No

a ship.

money paid to men and

questions were

two months of that man's body did not have to be warm.

the first

wages were yours. Sometimes the

Corpses were sometimes shanghaied.

Not

just white

males provided crews for ships

able way. Although white males, almost

from outside the United nity,

white and Hispanic

nomic form of

all

in

a question-

of them immigrants

formed the bulk of the commu-

States,

men and women

joined in an early eco-

equality. Blacks shanghaied "coloreds," Hispanics

shanghaied Hispanics, Chinese shanghaied Japanese and whites shanghaied everyone, regardless of color. Dorothy Paupitz, age seventy-eight,

still

sent

young men

to

an uncertain

fate,

even

af-

ter

going through four husbands herself. (She did not shanghai

her

husbands— two died and two went

Thomas Crowley, start as

Sr.,

insane).

founder of Crowley Maritime, got his

a Whitehall boatman on San Francisco Bay.

He knew

all

Man Crowley admitted he was one himself during his beginning. When he took a victim to his new home, "If they gave me any trouble, I hit 'em with the the crimps

on the waterfront. Old

boat's footstretchers. That

would

quiet

'em down."

While I was cataloguing oral histories at the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library what inspired me originally was reading first-hand accounts of men who drank drugged liquor and woke up one hundred miles outside the Golden Gate. Culled in 1959 and '60 by Jack McNairn, these stories have never been published before.

They make-up a compelling part of our marisome people would rather forget.

time heritage— but a part

Another clue, and a huge incentive

to

pursue shanghaiing as

a research topic, was discovery of listings in San Francisco City Directories of something called the Seamen's Boarding

Masters' Association.

When Tommy

Chandler, a

man

House

knew knew I

I

was a crimp, turned up as president of this association, I was on to something fascinating. I found a photograph of him

Xll

Preface

and two other crimps and the course was clear—the story of San Francisco's shanghaiing past had to be told even

be pieced together.

New

if

the tale had to

research in the pages of the Daily Alta,

from 1867-1890 yielded missing pieces with which a narrative could be stiched. The payment book of a crimp also was uncovered. James Laflin arrived in San Francisco in 1849 on the Gold Rush ship Arkansas. Laflin served as cabin boy on the passage around Cape

Horn from

New

When

York.

the Arkansas

Saloon, Laflin worked there as bartender.

over

fifty

A

years in San Francisco.

became

He

the

Old Ship

shanghaied

men

for

four hundred forty page rec-

ord book was discovered which documents payments made by Laflin for shipowners'

men

agents to the various shanghaiers

who

form the whaling crews Laflin specialized The period included is December 1886-December 1890. Over

brought in

to

thousand officers and

men

in

six

shipped through James Laflin's ship-

ping office in that four-year period— and

man

in.

when

a crimp brought a

he signed for the money received. "Shanghai" Brown,

"Shanghai" Nelson and dozens of other unsavory characters

left

a

penmanship for history to view. The voyage of discovery into San Francisco's seedy past has

sample of

their

yielded results beyond

my

wildest imagination.

The

fabric of

shanghaiing spread to the highest levels of state government, and influenced

national

legislation

and

international

affairs.

shanghaiing did not die until the crimps had drained as

money from

it

as they could.

passed from the scene

Bill

in

When

sailing ships

1915, shanghaiing died.

Pickelhaupt

August 1996 San Francisco

Xlll

had pretty

Yet

much much

Introduction

San Francisco has always had an aura of mystery unlike any

by the

city in the world, fueled

doms

possibility of living with free-

dreamed of elsewhere, of enjoying pleasures in a semi-lawless environment. Those illusions continue to be part of little

the city's attraction.

Part of the enduring mystery stems from stories that quickly

grew on the edge of the North American continent beginning with the Gold Rush in 1848-9. A manifestation of this lawlessness was the common practice of stealing men away to sea. They seemingly disappeared from the face of spread about the city as

it

the earth for long periods of time, sometimes never to be seen

again.

The

practice

—shanghaiing—

guage

gave a new word

to

English

the

lan-

replacing the older term of crimping.

A

from unscrupulous crimps and lowly runners to skilled boatmen, respected sea captains and ship owners were its principals. Politicians, capitalist businessmen and the

cast of characters ranging

police

were needed

evil as the practice

—

to allow shanghaiing to florish

seems

though

for,

to us today, law-abiding citizens turned

a blind eye.

Shanghaiing flourished 1910. the

It

lent a real

boom

state

in

San Francisco between 1850 and

—and

danger to the mystique

town. The practice prompted enactment of laws

and national levels to put an end

tunes could be

enforced.

the misery

The

made

power and influence of

XIV

at the

to shanghaiing, but for-

selling sailors, so these laws

political

—of

were weakly

the crimps

who

Introduction

made

their living shanghaiing prevented effective

enforcement of

such laws.

Crimps included men with names such

"One-Eyed"

as

Curtin, "Horseshoe" Brown, "Shanghai" Kelly, John "Shanghai Chicken" Devine;

women

Dorothy Paupitz and Anna Gomes, and many board inghouses, where the tired, lonely seamen

like

more. Sailors'

thought they would find clean beds and fresh food were, in fact, traps for the

unaware. The saloons and brightly

lit

gambling and

dancing halls where sailors went for entertainment on the water-

and the nearby Barbary Coast were traps where the hapless victims were transported by Whitehall boats to ships about to front

weigh anchor. These excellent harbor

New York

War

City around the

craft

were developed

in

of 1812, and frequently taken

more outside the Golden Gate. When the awoke from a drugged state as a result of knock-

twenty-five miles or senseless sailors

out potions slipped into drinks, they found themselves in the focsles

of sailing ships bound for Shanghai, Liverpool and ports

east.

This book follows the path of the crimps and politicians during their reign in San Francisco from 1850 until 1910. The first

three chapters introduce

many of

the personalities involved

from men as notorious as James "Shanghai" Kelly, folk-villain John "Shanghai Chicken" Devine and more in shanghaiing,

Thomas Chandler crimp of them all. The century-old

respectable shanghaiers like bare-knuckle boxer

and James Laflin, the smartest mystery of the fate of "Shanghai" Kelly

The

will also

be revealed.

fourth chapter brings the other side of the shanghaiing equa-

tion—first-hand accounts of

men who were

shanghaied. Most of

these accounts are published for the first time, and in the

may be found

San Francisco Maritime Museum Library.

Whitehall boatmen, the subject of chapter five, formed the crucial connection

between

sailors'

board inghouses on shore— the

supply side of the shanghaiing formula— and ships that needed sailors.

In addition to the activities of transporting shanghaied

XV

SHANGHAIED

sailors

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

and smuggling liquor and opium, Whitehall boatmen

ried passengers

times went in search

fer-

and cargo between ship and shore. They some-

more than twenty-five miles outside

of business. That business

the

may have been

Golden Gate persuade a

to

buy supplies from a particular meat market or ship chandlery, or the more serious activity of enticing inbound sailors to desert their ships after plying the men with bad whiskey and filling their heads with stories of high wages, a good drunk

British captain to

women,

or wild

if

they only followed their

new found

who were

Chapters six and seven document the crimps politicians,

and

their

powerful friends

friend.

like Chris

also

"Blind Boss"

Buckley, the Democratic Party boss of San Francisco

in

the

1880s, or William T.

in

the

Higgins,

Republican Party boss

1870s and '80s. In the face of legislation at the state level in California

and

at

the

federal

level,

community managed not only years after the

first

federal

San Francisco's shanghaiing

to survive but thrive for legislation,

the Shipping

over forty

Commis-

Act of 1872, attempted to put a stop to shanghaiing. Tables in the Appendix give an understanding of the demographics of the shanghaiing trade. Over seventy photographs and sioner's

line-drawings,

many

not seen for over one-hundred years, help

bring the days of Shanghaied In San Francisco to

XVI

life.

Chaos on the Waterfront Sailors are treated as, and are, chattels.

Daily Alta California, 1867

Instead of being an intelligent freeman, the sailor

is

a

slave, not only to his purposely excited passions but to

a race of beings

known

as landlords, or

boardinghouse

keepers.

Daily Alta California, 1868

The practice of shanghaiing men as sailors was a phenomenon of the American period in San Francisco's history. After the Americans' takeover of the town in 1846, desertion by sailors from visiting whaling ships or other vessels became more and more common. The Gold Rush of 1848-9 aggravated the problem tremendously.

The business of shanghaiing was

on by the lowly and not so lowly. Many partners in the activity during its heyday were prominent businessmen and women, and those fueled by political ambition, in San Francisco. There was money to be made in the market for human bodies and understandings were

—and

reached

carried

bribes were given to keep the pipeline flowing. But

was primarily public indifference to the sailor's plight that allowed greater exploitation by crimp and captain, threatening sailit

ors' civil rights.

SHANGHAIED

The

first

village of

ardson,

SAN FRANCISCO

IN

person to set up shop

in the sailor's port

of

call, the

Yerba Buena, was an Englishman, William A. Rich-

who

1822 had

in

a British ship that sailed through the

left

narrow opening that would come

to

be known as the Golden

Gate, into the harbor at Yerba Buena Cove. After the American

takeover in 1846, a captain ited port

found

who

crew

lost

in the sparsely inhab-

very difficult to find replacements.

it

The Gold Rush of 1848-9

San Francisco coincided with an

in

important shipping innovation

—

the glory days of clipper ships.

demanded more and more crewmen to handle greater complement of sail. Yet, with the Gold Rush fewer ing men were available to man the ships. Not only clipper Clippers

had problems finding crewmen

One need only look

into

—

all

ships

their

will-

ships

were short-handed.

Yerba Buena Cove, choked with hun-

dreds of ships in the early 1850s, to realize the severe shortage of

men who

sailors that existed. Into the void stepped shanghaiers,

supplied sailors for a price.

By

late

1853, the term "shanghaeing" was being used in

print to describe the practice of robbing

In

November of

that year, the

Daily Alta recounted the story of a

Fred Campbell, induced to ship;

sailor,

and kidnapping seamen. after he received his ad-

vance money, his liquor was drugged by ing him. Campbell's

was presented

money and

to three Whitehall

the waiting ship Bonita. tified police

who

One of

clothes

men

bent on shanghai-

were removed and he

boatmen, to be transported to

the

boatmen slipped off and no-

arrested the three shanghaiers. Campbell's sea

chest had also been rifled and filled with stones.

Another early

A

tale is that

'

of "an excitement" on Front Street.

boardinghouse keeper attempted to "shanghae"

sailor.

The

By ing to

sailor

was

a

drunken

freed and the boardinghouse keeper "flogged."

1855, Reverend William Taylor used the phrase shanghai-

denounce the practice

at

an open-air sermon

in

Portsmouth

Chaos on the Watefront

Author's Collection

Harbor Police The Harbor

Set Off After a Whitehall Boat, circa 1890s

Police, at both the North Station

South Station on Steuart

Street,

on Davis

Street

.

.

.

and the

had the duty of watching shipping, in

addition to their street patrols. Here, guided by moonlight, two officers

push off from a wharf

The

to intercept a Whitehall boat approaching a ship.

fact that the sails are already furled suggests the ship has

the harbor for at least a short time.

be involved in smuggling, the extra

someone

is

about to be shanghaied.

been in

Although boatmen were known

man

to

in the Whitehall indicates

SHANGHAIED

Square.

The

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

origin of the term shanghaiing

Shanghai, China, was not a direct one: Shanghai, he would have to go

all

the

San Francisco. Service on

return to

if

is

that a

voyage

to

a sailor was sent to

way around

at least

the world to

two or three ships

was necessary and would take nearly two years. A shanghai voyage was feared as a long journey with no assurance of returning alive. Sailors had to be forced or tricked into a trip to Shanghai

—

they were shanghaied.

The

practice of kidnapping

men

to serve in the

army, navy

or merchant marine had been around for centuries by the time the

Americans took over the cans.

affairs

of Yerba Buena from the Mexi-

The term crimping had been used

use of force or trickery to get

merchant marine.

men

as early as

to serve in the

1638 for the

army, navy or

3

The Americans took over the town council of the village from the Mexican authorities in 1846 as part of the spoils of the Mexican War. Following the advice of the merchant community, the first law passed by the council made it a criminal offense for a sailor to jump ship or for the residents of Yerba Buena to harbor a runaway sailor. The fine for enticing a sailor from his ship ranged between $20-$500 or a jail sentence of no more than 30 days. The fine and jail term for harboring a runaway sailor were the same. Sailors who deserted were arrested: in March 1850, four sailors were brought to the court of Judge Almond for deserting from the ship Mount Vernon, just in from Boston. "They were

all

held to answer."

In 1848, the their

ships

own hands

town merchants' association took matters in

It

port's

commercial

contracted with a group of young

sailors at

that task

into

an effort to maintain crews for the merchant

on which the fledgling

pended.

away

4

men

interests

de-

to return run-

$25 a head. But with the onset of the Gold Rush,

became impossible.

their ships to flee to the

Sailors could barely wait to leave

gold fields and try their luck with a pick and shovel. The young sailor-catchers, however, formed the

Chaos on the Watefront

nucleus of the Hounds, a group of young toughs rorized

who

briefly ter-

San Francisco. And a precedent was established

Francisco

—

for

payment on

in

San

the head of sailors to serve aboard

5

ships.

With the Gold Rush, San Francisco was an

instant city.

A

severe shortage of housing existed for years. Into the housing

men who built or operated boardinghouses. These boardinghouses served men newly arrived from all over the world on their way to the diggings. As miners drifted back to the city during the off-season, when winter rains and snow prevented mining, many of them stayed in boardinghouses. Some of these void stepped

boardinghouses would turn a miner into a sailor when the

resi-

grew too high. If the demand for would not be around long. Beatings

dent's bill for lodging and food sailors

was

were a

common method

brisk, a resident

of persuasion:

if

the

new

sailor resisted,

the burly boardinghouse runner convinced the reluctant

was

it

in his best interest to cooperate.

Boatmen played an city.

man

essential role in the

commerce of

the

new

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the shallow waters of

Yerba Buena Cove made it essential that a way be found to move people and goods between the ships anchored in deeper waters and the shore. Boatmen filled that need. For decades, only ships

wharf could do without the services of a boatman. The boatman was an indispensable part of San Francisco's mercantile community. tied at a

Taking

sailors'

boardinghouse runners and sailors removed

from an inbound ship or new sailors, shanghaied or otherwise, to an outbound ship was a job Whitehall boatmen were well suited for. They could carry five or more men in their boats and the boats handled rough water well. Whitehall boats could be sailed

or rowed.

San Francisco's early

political leaders,

many of whom were

merchants like entrepreneur Samuel Brannan and William T.

SHANGHAIED

Coleman,

vigilante

leader

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

in

1856

1851,

1877

and

and

a

shipowner, recognized the necessity of having available crew for the vessels that fed the city's

same

interests. It

the noose

was a

commerce. Ship captains shared the

Ned Wakeman, who placed

ship captain,

around the neck of the

first

victim of the Committee of

Vigilance of 1851. Another infamous captain, Robert "Bully"

Waterman, had cruelly maltreated the crew of the clipper ship Challenge on a passage from New York. He was greeted by an angry mob of 200 when the ship arrived in San Francisco, October 29, 1851, calling for the captain's hanging.

had jumped ship while

it

was

tipped off San Franciscans to

summoned

tes,

—

skin

but to

men

by

still

Crewmen who

stream waiting to anchor

in the

Waterman's misdeeds. But Vigilan-

their

notorious

bell,

saved

"Bully's"

some accounts related, because they wanted justice, save one of their own, a man guilty of atrocities upon the

not, as

of his ship.

A common

6

interest held the sailors'

boardinghouse masters,

boatmen and the merchant/political men of San Francisco together. Men were needed as crewmen so the commerce of the burgeoning city could grow. The town merchants

their runners, the

had notions that San Francisco would outstrip New York, Paris and London in world commerce. That could not happen if crews could not be found for ships. friends broke the rules,

If

the

merchants'

shanghaiing

was all right, as long as the port functioned and goods moved. The sea was the only viable route for travel to the new port which was isolated from the rest of the nation by miles of inhospitable land which would not be traversed by railroads

until

it

completion of the transcontinental railroad

in

1869.

Shanghaiing and the

sailors'

boardinghouse system were a

chaotic affair the first several years of San Francisco's existence.

Henry Smith, one of San Francisco's the to

American takeover, ran a

William Martin Camp,

sailors'

in his

first

two constables

after

boardinghouse. According

book San Francisco: Port of

Chaos on the Watefront

Courtesy San Francisco Maritime N.H.P. Vallejo,

Broadway, and Pacific Wharves

his Whitehall boat trade in 1873,

In the foreground, just

in 1863

.

.

When Dave Crowley

.

Sr. started

San Francisco's north waterfront looked very much

beyond Daniel Gibbs' Warehouse, Front

Street stood

like this.

on wooden

ings, creating a protection for small boats, such as the Whitehall boat seen catching the

pil-

wind

to

head out.

Two on

deepwater vessels have cockbilled their lower yards

the 800-foot Vallejo Street

to

move cargo down

into drays

Wharf.

In 1872-3, J.S. Dolliver's shipping offices occupied the building at the southwest corner

of Vallejo and Davis

streets.

Babcock also shanghaied

Next door,

sailors,

at the

time of this photo in 1863, the firm of Scott and

using the more polite term of shipping offices. Abel F. Scott

attempted to bribe the jury in a "hellship" outrage ten years

later.

At

the southwest corner of

Vallejo and Front streets, just to the south of the Gibbs' Warehouse's roof, the top story of the Sailor's

Home

in 1863

is visible.

chandlery sold provisions.

Boardinghouses faced Vallejo, where Heustis

&

Co. ship

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Courtesy San Francisco Maritime N.H.P.

Four Years Later, One Block Up Vallejo Vallejo, directly

on the

.

.

.

Battery Street crosses

below the three-story brick rooming house with the laundry

The Essex House, a boardinghouse, is across the puddle-filled street, with a wooden awning over the entrance to Henry Winkle's Bakery. The block of Broadway between Front and Davis streets, in the left center

roof.

of the photograph, was near Clark's Point, one of San Francisco's

landing sites for deepwater ships.

The building

Davis and Broadway was Grosbauer

&

at the

Co., liquor

first

southwest corner of

retailers.

Next door

is

John T. Calender's saloon. Callender, from the West Indies, also ran a "colored" boardinghouse in this building. Callender's had a very lively history.

James Douglass, a famed boardinghouse master and one-time partner of

"Frenchy" Franklin, resided two doors down, is

at

9 Broadway. Further

down

the Contra Costa Laundry, with laundry strung along a clothes line.

The north waterfront saw

the city's earliest commercial development,

with massive brick warehouses close to wharves. North waterfront property,

even unfilled waterlots, sold for $35,000 1850s.

8

to

$40,000 per

lot in the early

Chaos on the Watefront

Gold (1947), Richard Graham and George Roeben separately ran two of the early sailors' boardinghouses. Roeben ran a lodging establishment at 50 Commercial Street in 1852, but by 1856 he operated Charley's Rancho board inghouse at the corner of Drumm and Jackson streets. In 1861 Roeben's boardinghouse was at 37-39 Pacific Street, a location he would maintain for 7 nearly 30 years.

One of

profession early

came

famous crimps was a man who began

the most

—James

Laflin.

Born about 1831

in the

in Ireland,

he

America in 1847 and shipped as a cabin boy on the Arkansas, which sailed for the California Gold Rush around Cape Horn from New York June 26, 1849. It arrived in San Francisco in December of that year, and the captain, unfamiliar with the tides of San Francisco Bay, ran her up on the rocks of Alcatraz Island. Passengers and crew manned the pumps all night to keep her afloat until two passing whale boats were persuaded, after a hefty payment, to pull the Arkansas off the rocks. She was towed next to the Pacific Street wharf near the corner of what would become Battery Street. There she stayed, as did many such vessels that were beached in the growing metropolis. A hole was cut in her bow "to admit the thirsty" and Laflin tended bar at the Old to

Ship Saloon in her forecastle. The U.S. Hotel was built over the ship and although the ship

was sold

for scrap

and disassembled

in

1857, the Old Ship Saloon continued in another building for dec-

was

operating as a restaurant at 298 Pa-

ades (in the 1990s

it

cific Street at the

corner of Battery). Dick Ahlers was one of a

long line of

men who

still

shanghaied sailors

at the

Old Ship Saloon.

went into business as a boatman in 1850, as did Patrick Crowley, the city's future Chief of Police, ferrying passengers and goods in the familiar Whitehall boats to and from ships in the harbor. Laflin worked from Cunningham's Wharf, a Tshaped pier north of the area known as Clark's Point. As a bartender to seamen and a ferrying boatman, he was in an ideal position to become a shanghaier. An article on Whitehall boatmen Laflin

SHANGHAIED

in the

Daily Alta California

SAN FRANCISCO

IN

1882 credited Laflin with rising to

in

a comfortable position in the city through "perseverance and in9

dustry."

He

earned the nickname "Jimmy the Drummer," drummer

being the word for salesman

in the

19th century.

nickname was not explained, but Laflin was

his

The

origin of

selling sailors to

shipping masters. In 1859 he was a "solicitor" for the Sailor's

Home

located at Front and Pacific streets. There he performed

was a

the skills of his trade. Solicitor in fact

was well known whalers. He also ran his own saloon on ner.

Laflin for decades

polite

word

for run-

for shipping crews

on

Pacific Street in 1855

and, according to the 1860 census, operated the Vallejo Boarding

House

30 Vallejo Street near the water's edge.

at

The shipping to

articles

sailors signed or put their

provide an indication of other early shanghaiers

cisco.

The

may

in

mark

San Fran-

ship Kate Hooper, which sailed from San Francisco in

1856, paid advance or

which

money

to Laflin

and

to a

Crowley. This may

—only

not have been the future police chief

were used, so positive proof does not

exist;

however

ruled out that Patrick

Crowley was shanghaiing

names

articles

on

shipping

—John

"Shanghai" Kelly

from

1856

are

it

last

names

can not be

sailors.

Other

—James

Kelly

Peter Sanders, John C. Price, Richard

Graham and George Roeben's Charley's Rancho board inghouse. After a 30 year career as a saloon keeper and boardinghouse

master on San Francisco's waterfront, Laflin became a shipping

master Street

in

1881.

He moved

to

46 Spear

by 1894; he advertised himself

1886, Laflin

commenced annual

in

1890 and 104 Mission

as a shipping agent.

In

publication of a List of Officers

Composing the Whaling Fleet of San Francisco. The listing was helpful to those who wanted to supply whalers with crew; it identified captains

A

and

officers.

successful entrepreneur at his trade, Laflin had a ship built

for the sealing fleet in 1886, \he Annie.

10

The 54-foot

vessel,

however,

Chaos on the Watefront

was

ill-fated.

of Laflin

On

who

an expedition off Alaska, two crimp associates were aboard as crew, Harry "Horseshoe" Brown

and Nils "Shanghai" Nelson, were shot and wounded while raiding seal rookeries in an area leased to the Alaska

Commercial

Company. "Shanghai" Nelson barely escaped with his life when the guards for one rookery discovered him and his fellow pirates. As Nelson was picking up an oar to row to safety, a bullet struck him in the arm. Before he and his friends could row away from danger, another bullet hit him in the back of the neck, exiting the side of the neck. Knocked unconscious, Nelson almost bled to death by time he came to. His mates tried to patch up the holes, but he choked on the blood streaming

down

his throat. In des-

peration the crew of the small boat put his neck in a chock on the

gunwale of the boat, where Nelson's weight compressed the wound. Together they endured several hours at sea before the Annie rescued them.

The following

year,

the

Annie was seized

in

the Bering

Straits for taking seals illegally, forcing Laflin to post a

the ship's release. Saddest of

all,

the

Annie did not make

bond it

for

to the

was lost, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Holland, the Men from West Indies, Sweden, Scotland and California went for a share of the profits but wound up in Davy Jones' locker, entombed in the along with her crew of

sealing grounds in 1889: she

eleven men.

Annie. Laflin also enjoyed racing his sloop in the annual Master

Mariners' Regatta on San Francisco Bay. In 1880 he chartered

man named Marvin M. down the California coast to

her out for a fishing trip, this time to a Staples,

who

said he planned to sail

Santa Barbara. Four months later he returned to San Francisco

and offered Laflin $200

to

buy

the sloop. In fact, Staples had

system

sailed to Guayaquil, Ecuador; Laflin resorted to the legal

and had Staples arrested for piracy. Staples after he

was

Two

friends

made

bail for

on the owners or

indicted for barratry, a fraudulent act

part of the captain or

crew of a vessel against

11

its

SHANGHAIED

SAN FRANCISCO

when a warrant

underwriters, but ples

IN

was long gone, reported

for his arrest

was

issued, Sta-

seen on or near the Galapagos

last

Islands. Laflin sued to recover the bail-bond

money and

court

I3

costs.

Another early crimp was James "Shanghai" Kelly (1820-

who gave San

1868), one of those

Francisco international notori-

ety as the worst shanghaiing port in the world. In 1856 he ran the

Boston House sailors'

at the

corner of Davis and Chambers

streets.

Most

board inghouses were on Davis, Jackson, Pacific, Front,

two south of Market Street. Kelly's establishment may have been part of the Old Ship Saloon which was advertised in 1856 as having a branch at the same corner as the Boston House. Likely the saloon was a branch

Broadway, Steuart or Mission, the

of the shanghaiing trade.

last

14

Kelly's reputation as the most dreaded perpetrator of drugged liquor and the blackjack the in

was well deserved, and a bar

name "Shanghai" Kelly's keeps the legend Ireland, Kelly became an American citizen

1848 and shortly afterwards

may have

Crowley, Kelly Kelly, age 32,

was

that carries

alive today.

Born

in Philadelphia in

San Francisco. Like Patrick as a Whitehall boatman. A John the 1852 census as living in the

left for

started

identified in

same quarters that Crowley occupied while plying the trade of boatman in 1852. By 1854 Kelly ran a boardinghouse at 33 Broadway, and

—was

same man house.

A

short,

1867, a James Kelly, age 48

in

listed

as

—no doubt

the

operating another sailors' boarding-

heavy man with a red beard and

fiery temper,

according to author Richard Dillon's Shanghaiing Days (1961), Kelly preferred real sailors to greenhorns because they were easier

to

manipulate.

His favorite shanghai cocktail consisted of

schnapps, beer and sleep- inducing drugs. Chinatown cigarmakers

produced special brands for Kelly

Legend holds 1854,

when

—

laced with opium.

that Kelly's defining

moment came

in

October,

the boardinghouse master found three ships, including

12

Chaos on the Watefront

the hellship Reefer, badly in need of crews.

He

chartered a pad-

dle wheel steamer, the Goliah, to throw a birthday bash for himself with free drinks for all the guests.

account years

later

by Edward Morphy

According (in

to a nostalgic

1919-20) and others,

Kelly's invitation quickly spread through the Barbary Coast, the city's wildest section,

and 90 celebrants soon joined the ship-

board party. Kelly, the story went,

first

ordered the boat south

toward Alviso. But as the merrymakers drained the barrels of

booze and grew more intoxicated, the steamer turned around and headed out the Golden Gate into the Pacific Ocean. By that time, the partygoers

out potions.

were

By

drugged by the liquor's knock-

in a stupor,

coincidence,

wrecked shortly before and

it

a ship,

the

Yankee Blade, had

was believed Kelly picked up some

when the boat to dock, no one questioned what had become of his revelers. The legend said they were spirited aboard

of the shipwrecked survivors. In the excitement returned original

waiting ships including the Reefer, which had a reputation as a 16

(A hellship was one where

crew was driven physically and mentally by the officers to the point where life was a living hell. Suicides on such ships, frequently by jumping overhellship.

the

board to a watery death, were not uncommon).

"Shanghai" Kelly would have made a fortune supplying 90

men

to ships,

the story had

and

been

his audacity true.

and ingenuity, a source of awe

But the

facts suggest otherwise.

if

The Go-

was a steam packet with a regularly-scheduled run from San Francisco to San Diego in 1854. On September 30 the ship left San Francisco with more than 100 passengers. Newspaper accounts reported that she came upon the shipwrecked Yankee Blade off Point Conception, some 300 miles south of San Francisco, rescued most of the clipper's 800 passengers and continued on to San Diego. There is no report of a ship named Reefer having sailed from San Francisco at the time of Kelly's alleged shanghaiing party. For the record, the captain of the Yankee Blade was liah

13

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Courtesy of Henry Klee 's Great-Granddaughter, Mrs. Stanley Copel

The Old Ship Saloon,

at Battery

&

Pacific streets,

may

be the only

drinking establishment in the city remaining from the days of shanghaiing

.

.

.

New York in 1833, the ship Arkansas arrived in San FranDamaged when the tide ran her into Alcatraz Island, the crew

Built in

cisco in 1849.

abandoned her for the gold-fields and she was sold. Landlocked on Pacific Street, a door was cut in the bluff of her bow to serve the thirsty. She became a saloon and the cabin boy on her passage from New York, James Laflin,

on what became known as the Old Ship Saloon. when he was not rowing a Whitehall boat at nearby Cunningham's Wharf. By 1859, the hulk was cut up and sold for scrap wood. A two-story brick building, sleeping 22 seafaring men, was built in its place and its saloon continued the Old Ship Saloon name. Warren P. Herman, a crimp of note, operated from the brick building in the 1890s. The building was partially destroyed in 1906, and rebuilt by 1907; seen here with boardinghouse keeper Henry Klee, standing next to the post, sporting a returned to act as bartender

Laflin began his career as a crimp here,

walrus mustache, he

is

surrounded by helpers and patrons. Ironically, Klee

occasionally collected a fee for shipping a sailor through James Laflin' s son, Peter

J.

Laflin.

14

Chaos on the Watefront

and condemned for abandoning ship shortly after it was wrecked. "Shanghai" Kelly met his own untimely end some years tried

17

later.

The most

sensational case of 1868

was

the disappearance of

James "Shanghai" Kelly and John Parker. John Parker, a runner born in North Carolina, was seventeen years younger than Kelly's forty-eight years. In late January, the two had $1,500 in their possession.

was received

The sum

(equivalent to about $30,000 today)

as advances for sailors supplied to the ship Intrepid

and other vessels by Kelly, Parker and others. Then the pair

Rumor had

appeared.

it

dis-

they were shanghaied.

Whether Kelly and Parker were shanghaied or simply absconded with the money, four months later a story went around the waterfront that Kelly and Parker were in Peru. If shanghaied, they probably jumped ship at Callao, a port on the South American coast. The exciting news, however, was that Parker and Kelly had a shoot-out in Peru and that Kelly died.

From

the realm of fact-based legend to pure

times a short step story

was

that

when

it

came

myth was some-

An oft repeated Jim" who made the

to shanghaiing.

of a Chileno called "Calico

mistake of shanghaiing six plain-clothes policemen. The cops,

making their way back to San Francisco, vowed revenge and drew straws to determine who would track down the villain, after

who had

fled to Valpariso, Chile.

When

the avenger found the

him once for each cop shanghaied. The story became a popular legend on the San Francisco waterfront. But it shanghaier, he shot

is

unlikely that six policemen could have been off their beat for

long without being missed, and no records indicate that such was the case at the time of the alleged incident. "Calico Jim," though,

made

his

way

into several published

Another story

who

is

that

books about shanghaiing.

19

of an English cockney called Hurley

recounted tales of a Yankee ship on which the captain en-

joyed firing from the deck

at his

15

crew on the yardarms above

SHANGHAIED

with a six-shooter. Hurley, hol,

IN

who

SAN FRANCISCO

claimed to have abandoned alco-

found himself drugged by a cup of coffee and wakened

at

sea by a mate with a belaying pin aboard a reputed hell-ship, the

Andrew Jackson. Another shanghai victim was the young Englishman Frank H. Shaw

who

on the British ship Dovenby in the 1890s. In port at San Francisco, he and a friend found a gambling room at the back of a cabaret where Shaw caught a dealer cheating. Other sailors sprung to Shaw's defense when bouncers were summoned. The two Englishmen tossed the owner through a window, cleaned out the bank and demolished the bar, exiting through the shangsailed

Shaw

haiing trap door just as police arrived.

told of a

former

mayor and boardinghouse master shanghaied onto a whaler bound for a three-year cruise. Another of Shaw's tall tales was the one about a leading businessman shanghaied as an act of revenge on the part of a ship captain

home through

who had been

forced to enter the man's 20

the servants' entrance.

Such

tales

were gross

fabrications.

An

account written

1937 told of a harrowing voyage

in

in

1875 ending in San Francisco with the vessel's having been

boarded by "hundreds" of runners. The author,

if

he actually ex-

perienced the events that he recorded, would have been in his 80s

when

was

San Francisco's waterfront never supported "hundreds" of crimps. The tale, however, fed the the article

written.

British imagination for romantic seagoing stories.

Going through the Golden Gate up 'Frisco Bay, we were boarded by hundreds of crimps and boardinghouse runners who swarmed aboard They were just about at the height of their fame then, and a greater crowd of ruffians you wouldn't find in the whole seven seas. We were all aloft putting a harbour stow on the sails, and they followed us out on the yards, trying to get the sailors off to the boardinghouses. They had .

bottles of rotten

.

.

whiskey with them, and the noise they made

was awful. They got some of Little they knew what was in

16

the sailors off

—poor wretches.

front of them; given a night's

Chaos on the Watefront

spree and then shanghaied aboard

Horn with rain

out,

a suit of oilskins that

were

Cape wouldn't keep a shower of

and a donkey's breakfast

straw], and

pocket.

some

As

two months' advance on a rule they didn't

ship,

to face

mattress

[a

their

wages

come aboard

filled

in the

with

crimp's

the ships once they

up to the wharf, but the next morning one arrived on the quarter-deck with a big cigar in his mouth, a well-known character on the waterfront. The old man [captain] promptly tied

got him by the back of the neck and ran him over the gangway

and then stepped back on deck.

The crimp fairly howled with rage, and dared the skipper come on to the wharf and fight him. The old man promptly accepted the challenge, but the tough backed down completely

to

and walked it

A Born

off,

—good and

more

cursing the ship and everything connected with

—

hearty

factual story

in 1857,

he was a

is

as long as

we

Swede, Erik Olaf Lindblom. by trade who sailed for America in

tailor

way to San was approached one day by two men on plied, us.

sailor.

Francisco. In 1898, he the waterfront asking

if

Mistaking the word for "tailor," Lindblom re-

"Yah, sure," whereupon the men

We

l

that of a

1886, eventually finding his

he was a

could hear him.

said,

"Come

have a job for you." Lindblom was taken

along with

to a saloon,

drugged and shanghaied to a whaling bark, Alaska, headed for the Arctic Ocean.

when

ship at Port Clarence,

sent ashore for fresh water.

blom headed two

with

He jumped

Meeting a prospector, Lind-

for gold fields near Golovin Bay.

other

—dubbed Norwegian—and

Scandinavians

Swedes," although one was

Alaska,

the

He

joined forces

"Three

Lucky

found gold near

Nome. Lindblom returned to California in 1899, invested his money successfully in real estate, and co-founded the SwedishAmerican Bank in 1908. The former tailor had turned his shanghaiing into a fortune— a great result for a tailor thought to be a sailor

shanghaied on a whaler.

Returning to

facts,

22

"Shanghai" Kelly was typical of board-

inghouse owners of the period. Most were immigrants, unlike

17

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

who were

shipowners and merchants

Immigrants opened businesses

largely

American-born.

boardinghouses and saloons,

like

make a living with miniidentify many boardinghouses

laundries and houses of prostitution to

mal

capital outlay. City directories

from the 1850s to 1890s. William Paupitz, who operated the Minerva House saloon, was born in Prussia in 1820 and became an American citizen in 1860. He ran a sailors' boardinghouse at 59 Jackson Street beginning in 1860; he moved to 123 Jackson in 1864. Around the corner, Englishman Thomas Murray (30 years old in 1873) started out as a bartender at 504 Davis for another

Henry "Shanghai" Brown. Murray acquired, through marriage, his own establishment, the Golden Gate House at 510 Davis, which he ran for more than 30 years. When early boardinghouse operator Richard Graham, another Englishman, died in 1863, Murray married his widow Elizabeth, six years his senior

crimp,

and the mother of five children, aged four to sixteen. Together they

owned $25,000 worth of

real estate.

Brown's establishment

on Davis Street was taken over about 1871 by his former runner, Thomas Chandler. The Norwegian-born Brown moved his boardinghouse to 810 Battery Street where he lived with his wife

Mary and

four children.

for short durations,

The

1 1

lodgers in the building remained

however.

Robert Pinner (1830-1880), an Englishman, was Laflin's business partner in the 1860s. Pinner resided with his wife and five children in a

boardinghouse

at

—George Roeben

35 Pacific

—from

was next door ships. streets

which crimps supplied crew to whaling Laflin's home at the time was at Francisco and Stockton and later, in 1880, at 41 Vallejo where he lived with his

five children (daughters

Mary,

18,

and Ann,

14,

and sons Law-

rence, 16, Peter, 12 and William, 10), along with a boarder.

Other crimps and their houses were located cinity.

Joseph

John Gately catered

"Frenchy"

same

vi-

217 Broadway in 1860, 215 Broadway as late as the

to sailors at

Franklin at

in the

18

Chaos on the Watefront

Sutro Library

Eric Lindblom

Born in Sweden, Lindblom became a tailor by America and eventually found his way to San Francisco. In 1898, Lindblom was drugged and shanghaied, and came to on the whaling bark Alaska, bound for the Arctic Ocean. He was sent ashore for fresh water near Port Clarence, Alaska and decided to keep going.

profession.

He

He joined near

sailor,

.

.

with a Swede and a Norwegian and they soon discovery gold

Nome. The next

real estate

.

sailed for

year,

and banking.

A

Lindblom returned

to California

and invested in

great result for a former tailor thought to be a

shanghaied on a whaler.

19

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

1890s. Billy Maitland operated a house at 17 Vallejo in the late

Edwin Charles Lewis on

1870s,

the

same

street

between Front

and Battery. Crimps John Hart and John Rogers had houses nearby where a police sergeant, Thomas Langford, resided

in the

early 1870s. Langford had run a sailors' boardinghouse, the Blue

Wing

Washington

at 8

and

Street, in 1861,

later

on Clay

Street

before he joined the police force in 1871. Billy Maitland ran the

Wing

Blue

in

1868,

when John Devine

The California

Legislature

State

problem of shanghaiing

in

paid him a famous

1853 when

first it

visit.

acknowledged

the

enacted a law making

it

a misdemeanor to entice crew to desert a ship or to harbor deserters.

in

The law was

largely ignored, however, and had

little

effect

curbing the problem. Although the city's legislative delegation

exercised a great deal of control over the state in the 1850s and

few

'60s,

Not

efforts

were made

to regulate or eliminate shanghaiing.

1864 was another law enacted

until

to deal with the matter.

It

prohibited runners from boarding inbound vessels before they

docked

at

a wharf without

first

getting permission

from ship

masters or owners and from enticing crew to desert (San Francisco Consolidation Act of 1856,

aimed

at controlling

Amendment

18).

The law was

boardinghouse runners but violations were

only a misdemeanor with a fine of $100 and/or 50 days in too,

had

little

jail. It,

impact on crimping. Harbor police were not effec-

and police

tive in catching runners

Crowley (1866

officials like

two-time chief

1873 and 1879 to 1897), himself a former boatman, claimed understaffing prevented them from efPatrick

to

fectively enforcing the law.

Two news appeared

in

stories in

two separate

1867 told of Oakland men

who had

dis-

incidents, leaving grieving wives to de-

them dead after a year. But a dispatch from New York announced to the "widows" that their husbands had been shang-

clare

haied.

turn

One wife

cheerfully sent her husband travel

home; the other had

carpenter

who

to

make

his

way

at his

money

own

to re-

expense.

A

disappeared in 1889 was not so lucky. His family

20

Chaos on

the Watefront

had given him up for dead and returned to Lincoln, Nebraska,

when two

years later news reached San Francisco that the man,

James Mitchell, had been discovered constant abuse on a whaler and River, living with natives

Runner Edmund

made

who were

He had escaped way up the Yukon

in Alaska.

his

tending his frozen feet.

2

Gilbert, described as a "hanger-on around

was caught inducing several sailors to desert the French ship Limousin, taking them directly to another ship in the harbor. If the French sailors were rescued from the humiliation of shanghaiing, William Bray had less luck. From a boardinghouse on Steuart Street he had gotten a position as a hand on a coastal schooner. When he asked his landlord for his sea chest, the man demanded payment in gold for his bill. Bray offered greenbacks and police allowed the boardinghouse keeper to hold the chest until the debt was paid. Pacific Street doggeries,"

Crime among crimps was a common pastime, and a special Harbor Police was established in 1867 at Davis near Pacific Street, a few doors up from Thomas Murray's Golden Gate House. The officers' beat included the waterfront, Barbary Coast and North Beach region around Telegraph Hill, home to Italian, Irish and other immigrant families. Although shanghaiing was a common activity in the area, few of its perpetrators were arrested. That August, for example, 14 sailors were arrested for desertion but only one arrest was made of a runner or crimp for illegally enticing sailors to desert. One other arrest was made for the crime of boarding a vessel without permission although Har-

bor Police, at the request of ships' officers, boarded twenty-five vessels that

month

to

runners from enticing

The famous

keep sailors from deserting and prevent

away crewmen.

clipper Flying

haiing attempt in 1868.

When

Cloud was the target of a shangshe arrived from Australia, she

was boarded by a boat-load of five crimps and runners including James McCann, "Frenchy" Franklin and James Douglass. A Harbor Policeman had seen the Whitehall and followed them onto

21

SHANGHAIED

the vessel.

He and

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

the ship's mate ordered the crimps off but they

who knew them by reputation, What happened to the other four

refused and the officer,

them

all

known $20.

under

arrest.

placed is

not

but "Frenchy" was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined

25

Crimps, runners and boardinghouse masters alike were often in trouble for other offenses than shanghaiing.

rested in 1867 for assault and battery.

An

McCann was

elderly

Devlin, was charged with grand larceny for stealing sailors'

man, James a coat from a

boardinghouse maintained by a Hawaiian on Clark

was not

ar-

Street.

was valuable but what it held: four promissory notes, each for $40, drawn by Mason & Company shipping agents, payable to "Mike," B. Irish, John Adams and It

the coat that

"Napoleon"

—two

days after they shipped out on the whaling

bark Jeanette.

By

late

1867, anti-shanghaiing pressure grew, and for a few

years under Chief Patrick Crowley

more

arrests

were made of

runners illegally boarding ships than of prostitutes. Throughout

San Francisco's early years, under the Vigilance Committee of 1856 and its successor, the People's Party, which ran San Francisco until

1865 and again

shanghaiing was the

1870-71, the only effort to stop

in

amendment

to the Consolidation

Act of 1856

by runners. The city fathers were influenced by its merchants and shipowners, who wielded powerful influence on the city's economic and political life and

to prevent illegal boarding of vessels

had

little

interest in controlling or eliminating shanghaiing.

Shipowners and

was out of control

their captains felt the situation in the city

August 1867. As the British ship Blackwall lay in the harbor, a fire was set in the focscle apparently by disgruntled members of the crew. The flames spread through most in

of the vessel, damaging the cargo and destroying half the ship. Outraged, sixteen ship captains and Matthew Turner, a noted San Francisco shipbuilder, met at the Merchants' Exchange to discuss

22

Chaos on the Watefront

—

IT I&jIQRZED, l—ii lt« Mmdm mi » »», «r Mmnmtn, mU ty At imw ^ frlim > if lit t^^yt/C^

crimps refused to provide crew to one ship

a week or so

after

it

was due

to

sail.

Joseph "Frenchy" Franklin and Edwin Lewis entered San Francisco Republican County Committee politics, with

Tommy

Chandler on the Democratic side, as part of the boardinghouse masters' plan to exert as much political power as possible in the city

and

eliminate

state to further their interests.

its

first

attempt to

Government enacted the Shipping Act of 1872. The initial success of the Act

shanghaiing,

United States

In

the

Federal

:s."

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco Public Library

Thomas Chandler,

Sr., circa

1900

.

.

.

Tommy

Chandler

procured crews for British ships and advertised himself as a shipping master in The Men of California, 1900-02. A crimp and member of

San Francisco Democratic County Committee for over and president of the Seamen's Boarding House Masters' Association for many years, Chandler was a bare-knuckle boxer who moved easily among the rich and powerful men of Cali-

the powerful

thirty-five years,

fornia.

184

Economics Overcome the

frightened San Francisco's crimps so

Law

much

that they stepped

up

their active political involvement.

The Shipping Commissioners' Act of 1872 required

that sail-

by of the 1872

ors sign shipping articles in front of a commissioner appointed

a federal circuit court, before a voyage. Section 11

Act provided for a $100 fine for anyone demanding or receiving any remuneration for obtaining employment for a seamen or a

non-seaman seeking work as a seaman. This was a blow at the shipping masters who charged a fee for placing men on a ship.

The most important provisions were contained and

which provided

19,

that

18

advances could be paid only to the

wife or mother. This was a direct threat to the sailors'

sailor, his

board inghouse masters. Vessels

from the Act. Crews were Commissioner's

Commissioner his

in Sections 17,

office.

to settle

to

were exempt

in the coastal trade

be paid off only

Section

25

in the

authorized

the

Shipping Shipping

any disagreements between a captain and

crew. The fine for illegally boarding a ship was set at $200.

Shipping agents could continue to serve as intermediaries but could be paid only by a merchant, not by fees deducted from a sailor's

stop.

wages.

advances could be stopped, shanghaiing would

Shipping commissioners were to be appointed by U. S.

cuit courts

on

If

ships,

and compensated by fees charged for placing

an aspect that

critics feared

cir-

sailors

encouraged collusion be-

tween shipowners and commissioners. But the Daily Alta, a champion for sailors, heralded the legislation as protecting the rights of both

merchants and seamen.

What Congress

6

was that sailors' boardinghouses kept sailors going when they were not needed aboard a ship and that few sailors had cash to pay their boardinghouse bills. The boardinghouse masters extended credit to seamen. failed to realize

Congress also underestimated the resourcefulness of the crimping

community.

The

first

U.

S.

Shipping Commissioner appointed in San

Francisco was Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson,

185

who

gained fame

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

as head of Stevenson's Regiment, a teers

who

group of

arrived in San Francisco in 1846.

rooms rented at of Jackson and Front streets and announced in July, 1872, in three large

New York

He

set

up

volun-

his office

the northeast corner his intention to en-

force the law with gusto.

Commissioner Stevenson declared

that

no advances would be

The law, however, initially exempted coastal vessels, a loophole that was remedied by a Philadelphia judge the following November. That

paid thereafter to shipping or boardinghouse masters.

effectively put

an end

to crimps' sources of

month they declared war on would see to it that he got no

income and the next

They

the shipping commissioner.

business. Stevenson responded by

posting a notice along the waterfront that 100 sailors were needed

and could apply

at his office.

He

next swore out warrants for the

two of the city's longest-standing shipping masters, Lewis C. Hunter and Abel F. Scott, for placing crews without going through his office. He was finding all the sailors he needed, he said, to which the boardinghouse masters' association responded that several ships were sitting in the stream waiting for

arrest of

crews.

The Daily Alta publicized Stevenson's announcements, ing vessels that sought

list-

crew who could be hired through the

commissioner's office. "As long as the quarrel continues," the

newspaper opined, sailors would "remain on shore drinking free rum." Crimps resorted to hanging around the commissioner's office

when crews were

good drunk, then

set

paid off, waiting to entice them to a

them up

in their

boardinghouses.

Stevenson was determined, however, that no "blood-money" or bonuses would be paid to intermediaries and that any that

changed hands would be

legal tender paid to sailors

money them-

The effect was that British captains "blood-money" to crimps, although the need for crews was great to transport cargoes from a large California wheat harvest. stopped paying

selves.

American captains and ship owners, realizing

186

that

$143,000

Economics Overcome the Law

reportedly had been paid in "blood-money" to shipping masters

over a five-month period, followed

suit,

publishing a

memo

de-

pay members of the Seamen's Boarding House Masters' Association and agreeing to support Stevenson in

claring their refusal to

A

few members of the association urged compromise with Stevenson, but the majority felt they could win the enforcing the law.

by defying the determined commissioner. The association announced publicly that its members would refuse to supply sailbattle

ors for a year,

if

necessary,

were not paid.

their regular fees

if

Stevenson held firm and the captain of the British bark Lapwing stated that

he would stay

in port for six

months

more crimps.

than pay "blood-money" to any

Boardinghouse masters began to intimidate of violence fice.

if

he had to rather

if

sailors

with threats

they sought employment at the commissioner's of-

American ship

captains, A. R.

West of

the

Arracan and the

captain of the Robert L. Lane, formed bodyguards for sailors so

they could go to the commissioner's office in safety. Crimps retaliated

by sending

they entered or

left

their strongest runners to threaten sailors as

Stevenson's second-floor office, pulling them

off the stairs. Harbor police had to be

on

at least

one occasion.

Sailors continued to find office

summoned

to restore order

x

work through

the commissioner's

and as the year ended, only seven months

enactment,

it

appeared

system could survive

less

its

and

less likely that the

after the law's

boardinghouse

impact. Crimps were prepared to intimi-

date sailors but not confront police.

So they organized a march

with banners flying and a band blaring out tunes, in a pathetic attempt to rally public support for their side. The Daily Alta

sneered at the effort, and British shipowners telegraphed support

of their captains' refusal to continue paying crimps. Boarding-

house masters threatened next, chests of sailors

who

in desperation,

to withhold sea

sought jobs without their permission.

A

rumor circulated in December, 1872, that boardinghouse keepers would no longer do business through shipping masters

187

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Courtesy Bancroft Library

General B. Griffin Barney, Deputy Shipping Commissioner . . . Barney was Shipping Commissioner Jonathan D. Stevenson's Deputy

when

this Taber photograph was taken in 1880. The United States Shipping Act of 1872 required all sailors to sign articles of agreement

before the Shipping Commissioner. Republican boss Dick Chute effected a compromise with Republican Stevenson which allowed the boardinghouse system to continue.

188

Economics Overcome the Law

California Historical Society,

San Francisco. Photographer: Redington,

St.

Louis Art Studio, San Francisco. FN-27723

504 Battery

Street, circa 1879-80

.

.

.

Over a dozen commission mer-

chant and ship and custom house brokers located their offices opposite the

Custom House on Battery Street. The Laffey and George Naunton were on shipping master in 1886,

Tommy

offices of shipping masters this

Chandler

next to his old friend Stewart Menzies.

189

Edward N.

block in 1880. After he became a set

up

his office at

518 Battery,

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

but would furnish sailors to any ship that needed them. Other

rumors warned

New

from

that

crews would be supplied by

men

sent

by

rail

would be cheaper to pay their transcontinental fare than "blood-money," as railroads had agreed to lower fares in cooperation with ship owners. Crimps countered by offering to supply sailors to British captains at a monthly rate of $40 per sailor, dropped to $35 when the captains resisted and $30 for American ships (the British ships were pressed to sail with their grain cargoes). In effect, the crimps were beaten. Sailors were York.

It

—

again the losers

their

wages were lowered

to

$25 per month.

With the New Year of 1873 came a new pair of officers for the Seamen's Boarding House Masters' Association. The powerful new team of Richard Chute as secretary (and secretary of the state Republican Party) and Edward Warren Casey, treasurer (former secretary of the state Democratic Party), were recruited. Stevenson himself was a Republican and could work with the association's new officers. They set up an office in the same building where the commissioner was housed and began a publicly-announced cooperative relationship. Stevenson agreed to the association

supply

was

tell

when crews were needed and Chute agreed

men from

a daily

list

of eligible applicants.

hired, his boardinghouse

was

notified

When

to

a sailor

and any claims by the

boardinghouse master against the sailor for outstanding

bills

pre-

sented to Chute. Chute and Casey deducted five percent from the

advances paid as a commission for cashing any due

bills,

or notes

payable, after the sailor departed port. Chute and Casey

played the role formerly

filled

by shipping masters.

Richard Chute's power to forge

from

now

this

compromise stemmed

his ability to deliver votes to his preferred candidate in

Re-

publican Party primaries. Dick Chute and Chris Buckley, before

Buckley became a Democrat, apprenticed under William T. Higgins, the

Republican Party boss from the 1860s

until his

death in

1889. Higgins operated from his saloon on Davis Street in the

190

Economics Overcome the

Law

midst of the sailors' board inghouses, as politics in San Francisco loosened up after the defeat of the People's Party.

Chute had

ties

board inghouses through the

to the

political

system, having used their boarders to deliver votes for the Re-

publican Party candidates he backed

—men who voted

repeatedly

for candidates at various polling places. Boardinghouse keepers,

by supplying "repeaters" on election days, garnered favors from both political parties. If officials at a particular polling place objected, boardinghouse runners tactics to

overcome any

and

objections.

their friends

used strong-arm

The payoff

for the repeaters

would be a drink or two, maybe a dollar. Sailors' boardinghouses were a natural site for Chute and Buckley to recruit repeaters.

One of "Blind" Chris Buckley's Republican opponents

in the

1890s, Martin Kelly, declared that Buckley had "developed a

knack for colonizing the boardinghouses and turning 12 rough work of the primaries."

tricks in the

San Francisco's County Registrar of Voters Kaplan found in four precincts alone fifty-five men from boardinghouses who never resided at the addresses listed in their registration maIn 1879,

terials,

or had

moved from

Kaplan believed hundreds

The

First

the reported address months before.

fell into

Ward was more

the category of

"repeaters."

highly organized than wards South of

Market or other outlying areas of the keepers satisfied not only the

demand

city. Sailors'

boardinghouse

for sailors but also

were

in

a position to satisfy the political needs of the city's bosses by supplying "repeaters."

Stevenson boardinghouses.

now found

When

there

himself in a position to help the

was a

on the market,

—

$10 to $30 demanded reverse "blood-money" each man taken off their keepers' hands. The association

British captains

for

glut of sailors

complained about

this

"blood-money" and Stevenson

reverse

took action against the captains.

I3

191

SHANGHAIED

SAN FRANCISCO

The

future for shipping masters, however,

and

in

ing,

his

IN

books

was not promis-

1873 Abel F. Scott retired from the business, burning

in

a large bonfire and locking the doors to his once-

thriving office.

As a

parting shot, he sued the commissioner for

favoring the boardinghouse association by refusing to place sailors

whom

him

Scott had presented to

for the ship Prussia.

"Shanghai"

Brown was one of the witnesses for the commissioner and the new system, glad not to have to pay ship captains to rid himself of excess boarders. The result of Scott's suit was that new rules were drafted and the

suit

was dropped.

The changes wrought by were to

to

14

the Shipping Commissioners' Act

be short-lived, however. British captains resorted again

paying "blood-money" when there was a shortage of seamen

and the old system was resumed

later in

1873. Boardinghouse

keepers were happy to have their cash-flow back.

To

further

blunt Stevenson's recent victories, Harbor police informed that they

no longer would accept the $3 reward for every deserter

returned to a ship.

15

Aha

In early 1874, the Daily state

him

Marine Board, saying

it

called for the abolition of the

had been a

tion after the establishment of the federal

failure, filled

no func-

commissioner and was

merely an opportunity for gubernatorial appointments. In June,

two years fied

had passed the law, Congress effectively nullithe Commissioners' Act for deepwater ships other than after

it

whalers and in December,

1875, the California legislature re-

The U.S. Shipping Commissioner maintained a register which included names of all sailors who had shipped before him. (This became the forerunner of attempts by shipowners to use a grading system for seamen maintained by an employment book. The shipowners system was despised by sailors). Crimps resorted to old tactics by falsifying names on the

pealed the Marine Board Act.

commissioner's register while loading shanghaied victims aboard

outbound ships.

16

The crimps had won

that round.

192

Economics Overcome the

Law

San Francisco Maritime Museum N.H.P.

The ship Amazon John Daly's ter to

in full sail

sailors tried to ship

avoid paying his boarding

.

on bill.

.

.

the

One of boardinghouse keeper Amazon through a rival mas-

Daly brought the

sailor,

Charles

O'Brien, before Judge Hale Rix. The judge dismissed charges.

193

SHANGHAIED

They made

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

from enactment of a state law in 1889 that it a criminal offense not to pay a boardinghouse or hotel bill. It allowed innkeepers to put a lien on baggage or other property of guests who owed them money and to sell such propalso benefited

was especially helpful when boardinghouse keepers stole sailors from one another, leaving lodging masters with unpaid bills. By 1890 more and more cases came to light of boardinghouse keepers stealing sailors from each other. Let the other guy pay the bills and I'll pocket the money was the philosophy. Boardinghouse keeper John Daly prosecuted one of his sailors, Charles O'Brien, for de-

erty to recover the costs of unpaid bills. That

frauding an innkeeper,

when O'Brien

tried to ship

through a rival

boardinghouse keeper on the ship Amazon. Judge Hale Rix

dis-

missed charges.

"Shanghai" Nelson accused the Sailor's dent of pulling a similar stunt ers

when Nelson

one night and was stuck with

signing false

names on

on Nelson and

superinten-

two of

his board-

The two men admitted run out

their shipping articles in order to 1

their bills.

The boardinghouse ever,

their bills.

lost

Home

as conditions

association began to lose

changed dramatically

major reasons caused the changes. The

city

in

power, how-

its

the

1890s.

Three

was developing south

new board inghouses as competition. SecHome, subsidized by the city with low rent

of Market Street with ondly, the Sailor's

and having a large reserve of men, aggressively found jobs for sailors at less cost to ships. Finally, a

—

the Coast

to represent coastal sailors

union was formed

in

1885

Seamen's Union.

Competition rapidly grew that challenged traditional boardinghouses and their long-time control over the sailors' job market.

with

The

Sailor's

Home's

rent of $1 a year enabled

much lower overhead

it

to operate

costs than private boardinghouses.

194

18

Economics Overcome the

Law

San Francisco Public Library

Andrew Furuseth, "Emancipator Coast Seamen's Union as shanghaiing for years, forts

it

of the Sailor"

.

.

.

N.H

P.

Furuseth led the

its

secretary for decades. Although Furuseth fought

was

the death of sail that killed the practice. His ef-

through tough times kept the union together and ultimately Furuseth

accomplished his goal of civil rights and respect for seamen.

195

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

The Coast Seamen's Union, founded

in

1885, called a strike

1886 that slowed the placement of crews on coastal vessels by harassing non-union men from sailing on coastal vessels. In an in

anonymously-published statement, a shipowner decried ors

in

the past had been

"satisfied"

"content" with their employers and

"A

with their board inghouses.

satisfactory alike to the

that sail-

shipowner and

condition generally

sailor has

been radically

demagogues and mercenary agitators, who as leaders of the Coast Seamen's Union, now seek to pose in the philanthropic role of the 'Sailors' Savior.'" Shipowners accused the union of depriving them of freedom to employ whomever they wished and the union argued for living wages and a closed-shop system in which only its members would be hired. Union sympathizers frequently boarded coastal ships in an effort changed by the

to talk

acts of political

"scab" workers off crews, and sometimes resorted to

force, trying to tear the its

lumber schooner Irmd's cook away from

wheel as he hung on for dear

another boat, the Dora, delaying

could be found.

life its

cisco in 1886, and

members

left

men

off

departure until replacements

not conducive to the union's cause

end of 1886. Some 1,200

offered, others

spiriting three

19

The economic climate was at the

and

if

sailors

idle in

union sailors refused to work for

were readily available the

were

union

in

order

to

San Franthe wages

to take the jobs.

work,

resorting

Many to

the

Shipowners' Association office for placement. The next year the Knights of Labor, needing to consolidate

its

resources on other

withdrew support of the Coast Seamen's Union, leaving it fight its battles alone. It was further hampered in its militant

fronts,

to

efforts

from

by police specially detailed

non-union sailors

attack.

One

success the Coast Seamen's Union achieved was the de-

by United States Labor Commissioner Tobin to hold hearin San Francisco to solicit testimony concerning conditions

cision ings

to protect

196

Economics Overcome the

relating to shipping sailors

payment of advances

hibited the

members.

Men

men

this port.

A

key provision pro-

anyone but a sailor's family such as R.L. David, George Fogle, James Cohen

who

and Louis Levy helped

from

Law

to

supplied clothing to seamen admitted they

find jobs as sailors.

They swore they never charged a

commission from the men. Sailors' boardinghouse masters John Kane and Adolph Classen denied charging an advance; fellow

McMahon

boardinghouse masters John Munroe and Peter

said

they did discount a sailor's $40 advance note from $2.50 to $5 they did not

know

who had been

the person cashing the note.

in the sailors'

if

George Roeben,

boardinghouse business over 35

years by 1887, denied he ever discounted advance notes.

The sion, or

Laflin Record gives the

lie

commisor charged by

to statements that a

an advance, was never paid

to clothiers

them. George Fogle had signed for several advances and Louis

Levy's signature

is

one of the most frequent

in Laflin's

book.

Although nothing came from the Labor Commissioner's hearings of material benefit to the Coast Seamen's Union, they did serve as a forum for the grievances of coastal sailors against a

system aligned against them. Andrew Furuseth had the astuteness to recognize that public

opinion on the side of the sailor was a

very powerful thing. The union's newspaper, the Coast Seamen's Journal, and Furuseth's frequent trips to Washington, D.C., to

lobby Congress were the two most powerful weapons sailors had 20

in their

favor in the fight for recognition of their civil rights.

Congress responded with other laws aimed haiing. In

1884

it

at

curbing shang-

passed the Dingley Act, named for

Maine Senator Nelson Dingley, Jr. At established the Bureau of Navigation in

the

same

its

sponsor,

time, Congress

the U. S. Department of

Treasury (part of the executive branch of government) and a U.

Commissioner of Navigation to which shipping commissioners reported. In 1886 Congress abolished the practice of compensating commissioners with fees paid by shipowners. The Dingley S.

197

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco Maritime Museum N.H.P.

The wreckers move

in

on the

last old

escape the 1906 earthquake and fire

.

by John W. Proctor's lens as one of the is

about to

.

.

last

fall.

198

wooden waterfront

structure to

Fred Offernan's Saloon

is

captured

landmarks of the shanghaiing era

Economics Overcome the

Law

Act specifically prohibited payment of advances on sailors' wages, providing that all payments be made only to a seamen, his wife, mother or other relative. Although the Shipping sioners'

Act of 1872 attempted

mother or other relative only, tiveness in 1874.

to legislate advances to wife,

that act

was amended

into ineffec-

21

The new law

struck at the heart of crimps' livelihoods by

money

outlawing their practice of receiving advance

boardinghouse

Commis-

bills.

The law

also

reinforced

against runners' boarding vessels before they

W. Lane

passengers and cargo unloaded.

the

to

settle

prohibition

were docked and

Booker, the British

new law would force sailors to be money in order to pay bills and result in

Consul, moralized that the

more

careful with their

fewer drunken sprees. But 24 deepwater boardinghouses and another 29 South-of-Market establishments catering to coastal sail-

would not place sailors unless the customary advances were paid. At the time, crews for grain ships were in demand for the passage around Cape Horn to England, and it was in captains' and boardinghouse keepers' interests to evade the new law, which they did openly. It was common knowledge on San Francisco's waterfront that no ship left the city announced

ors

in

that

they

1884 without advance monies

masters,

who

first

being paid to boarding

refused to ship out sailors otherwise.

Another reform law was enacted

in

1895 with the help of a

San Francisco congressman, former judge James Maguire, who

won

his seat in

1892 and again

in

1894 with the backing of the

Maguire successfully pushed the act named for him that exempted coastal sailors from arrest for desertion and prohibited the hated payment of advance money. That

Coast Seamen's

Union.

law, too, though laudable in intent, was largely ignored.

when

Seamen

Supreme Court in 1897 issued the Arago decision (Robertson v. Baldwin), which reaffirmed that sailors had few rights as citizens because they were

suffered another set-back

the U. S.

199

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

vulnerable and needed to be cared for or treated like helpless

"Seamen

children.

are

.

.

deficient in that full and intelligent

.

responsibility for their acts that

is

accredited to ordinary adults,

and [need] the protection of the law

in the

same sense

in

which

minors and wards are entitled to the protection of their parents

and guardians," the Court

stated. Sailors,

it

concluded, had to be

protected from themselves and therefore were not subject to the Constitution's Thirteenth

Amendment

that prohibited involuntary

23

servitude.

By

1899, there was a shortage of seamen because of the

Spanish- American

"Shanghai" Brown, violating the

Svenson and

War Jr.

Gold Rush. Henry and Johnny Savory were charged with and

Klondike

named Their accuser was Andy

allotment law in connection with sailors J.

McDonald

in that year.

Furuseth of the Coast Seamen's Union.

United States Court

Commissioner Heacock dismissed the charges and the sailors were shipped out. Brown said after the case was dismissed that "the sailors were stool pigeons for certain persons who had an enmity against the shipping masters." He was speaking of Furuseth.

Tommy that

Crowley,

Sr.,

no friend of unions,

later intimated

Furuseth and the union were behind the bombing of One-

Eyed Curtin's boardinghouse

in

1893 and openly accused the

union of blowing up a boat, the Ethyl and Marion, that ferried

non-union crews to ships. The union passed a resolution to hurt

John Curtin, John Kane, Al Mordaunt, Adolph Classen and John

Munroe

in

the period licity that

any way possible.

which were

A

number of

blasts occurred during

attributed to union activists.

they gave the union tested Furuseth 's ability to recover

public sentiment and hold the union together.

One of cation,

Home

The bad pub-

the union's crusades

was

24

to expose, through

its

publi-

Seamen's Journal, the fact that the Sailor's was "the largest crimp joint in the world." In 1875 a the Coast

known crimp, Andrew

Peterson, had

200

become one of

the

Home's

Law

Economics Overcome the

superintendents, forced to resign a few years later along with su-

perintendent John Duff for allegedly shanghaiing boarders.

Home

continued to be suspect, however, under

tendent Daniel Swannack,

who

its

new

took over in 1880.

superin-

He was

cused of mismanagement and of smuggling in liquor, against the

Home's

rules for sobriety.

of Supervisors to investigate the

The union asked

Home

establishments for sailors in the city. health It

as

safe

haven for poor

strictly

the

Despite a clean

sailors.

ac-

Board

one of the worst such

from the supervisors, criticism of the

was no

The

Home

bill 2

of

continued.

They were

ill-treated if

when offered the chance or if they tried to find other lodgings. The low rent from the city permitted the Sailor's Home operators to make a big profit. Swannack admitted they refused to ship out

to the board's police in

$32,500 from

profit of

receipts

committee

1888 that the

in

sailors the previous year

$19,000

after

paying

bills

and

Home

that he

had taken

had made a

and the five percent of gross

due the Home's sponsor, the Ladies' Seamen's Friend

Home's lease for another three years. Swannack resigned but was retained until a replacement could be found. On New Year's Eve he was arrested Society.

The board

nevertheless extended the

with two other men, a stableman and longshoreman, for beating

and taking the clothes of a lodger

Home. Swannack defended

who

tried to leave the Sailor's

by claiming the sailor owed $40 and repeatedly refused to ship out. Swannack also sent a letter to the Daily Alta extolling the Home's virtues and his management of it. As a Salvation Army captain put it, Swannack "went there a poor man and in a few years he became rich." The Ladies' Society

his action

was unhappy with

the bad publicity the

Home

was receiving and barred reporters from its February, 1889 monthly meeting, when they considered a replacement for Swan-

A

San Francisco Chronicle reporter learned that the sole applicant was the former city jailer, "Hangman" John Rogers, a nack.

cohort of boss Buckley's and a

known

201

crimp.

SHANGHAIED

The principal objection Home was its willingness wages

—

much

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

that the to

union had to the Sailor's

place

sailors

at

below-union

$10 below the going rate of $30 per month. Boardinghouse keepers also were threatened by the Home. "Frenchy" Franklin told the supervisors in 1889 that the as

as $5 or

ladies of the Sailor's

being "hoodwinked" by Swan-

nack and that the

Home were Home was an

unfair competitor to boarding-

houses like

Board members decided

his.

to

visit

the

Home

themselves and talk to sailors living there. Just before Christmas,

members of

the committee paid a visit to the Sailor's

Home

to

opinions of the sailors living there as to their treatment.

elicit

Several sailors said the

Home's runners promised

kickback, or blood-money,

if

The promised money was never quent about the

Home

would

the sailors

the sailors a

stay at the

Home.

received. Complaints were fre-

The

not being heated.

residents had to

continue moving around to stay warm. Bedclothing was also

in-

adequate.

The union sponsored a march

Home

mid- 1880s when the

in the

placed sailors on a ship for $20 per month, and fiery

speeches denounced Swannack. Activists threatened to prevent the ship, Forest Queen,

from

sailing but instead a delegation

was

meet with Swannack. He refused to see them, further angering the union. In 1888, police spokesmen said the Sailor's

named

Home •.

to

caused more trouble than any other boardinghouse

in the

27

city.

The

Sailor's

Home was

founded

1856 by the Ladies' Aid

in

and Protection Society for the Benefit of Seamen. The organization later ety.

they

changed

its

name

Their building on Davis Street was in such bad condition that

moved

to a building at the southwest corner of Battery

Vallejo streets in 1863. rine Hospital tion

Seamen's Friend Soci-

to the Ladies'

between

was

The

Sailor's

Home

in the old

and

U.S. Ma-

the creation of an unusual degree of coopera-

local,

concerted effort was

state

and federal

made by men such

202

officials.

as

In

1875,

a

A.M. Winn and A.K.

Economics Overcome the

Stevens to have the Sailor's

Home moved

Law

from

its

old quarters to

roomy site on Rincon Hill. Dedicated to preventing drink among sailors, it also seemed to be dedicated to gauging sailors the

whenever possible and

at least as dedicated to

working against the

other boardinghouse keepers of San Francisco.

the

The Federal government gave the U.S. Marine Hospital to City and County of San Francisco for use as a Sailor's Home.

The California

state legislature

agreed to pay expenses of improv-

would not tumble down Rincon Hill (the building was closed as the Marine Hospital after the earthquake of 1868). The city leased the building to the Ladies' Seamen's 28 Friends Society for one dollar per year. ing the building so

it

Home on

Rincon

ors, four or five times the

number

The sailors'

Sailor's

boardinghouse

in

Home

that the Sailor's

Hill

had capacity for 150

sail-

that could stay at the average

San Francisco. What

this

meant was

could always be counted on to put down-

ward pressure on sailors' wages because of its low operating cost and large number of men who could be released at rates lower than other board inghouses could afford to charge still

made money

for

its

In 1891, the city's tee to

investigate the

—and

the

Home

crimp /operators.

Chamber of Commerce

set

up a commit-

"blood-money" problem, naming former

Supervisor Stewart Menzies as chairman. The union decried the fact that sailors'

views would not be considered and called the

investigation a waste of time.

ever, estimated that

San Francisco hands, a total

The committee's

some 3,000

sailors

report,

how-

had been shipped from

1889 with $40 per-head going into crimps' of $120,000 in illegal payments. It blamed British in

shipowners for allowing crewmen to desert

in

order to hire

cheaper crew, and proposed that two "competent and reliable persons" representing each flag be hired to manage the placement

of seamen on both British and U. S. vessels. friend of Menzies,'

was hired

as

203

British

Tommy shipping

Chandler, a 29

master.

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Stewart Menzies began life in Gold Rush San Francisco as a stevedore and rose to prominence as part of the city's

elite

.

.

Menzies

.

served on the Board of Supervisors in the

1870s.

Tommy

Chandler

pointed Menzies to the state

convention

cratic

in

ap-

DemoYears

1871.

was repaid when Menzies recommended his friend Tommy Chandler to the newly crethe

later,

ated

favor

position

master.

of

years later,

shipping

British

As Tom Crowley, "'If a captain

Sr.,

put

it

needed a

crew, he could always find

Tommy

Chandler at Stewart Menzies."' Photo San Francisco Public Library

John T. Chris

of

Supervisors

owner

.

Sullivan,

Buckley's

.

.

and

member

Board of shoe

store

Sullivan parlayed his

popularity as an oarsman with the

Pioneer Rowing Club among the boatmen and boardinghouse masters

of his First

to the

Ward

into election

Board of Supervisors.

Sulli van's connections to the

world of shanghaiing are shad-

owy—he

attended the wedding of

James Laflin's daughter, a long time crimp, and had a home next to

Tommy

Chandler in the 1100

of Montgomery Photo The Olympic Club

block

Street.

204

Economics Overcome the

Law

Courtesy Dr. Albert Shumate

—

The Sailor's Home This building went from ominous to sinister after was taken over by the Ladies' Seamen's Friends Society. Built in 1852 as the U.S. Marine Hospital, it became transformed into the Sailor's Home in 1875. One of the few sailors' boardinghouses without a barroom, its reputation was so bad that only foreign sailors frequented the place. Known as the it

"largest crimp joint in the world," a succession of superintendents ran the institution for their private gain rather than for the benefit

of sailors

strange port (this was the connotation of the term "Sailor's

Home"

of the world). Ironically, a saloon graces the foreground of

this

205

new

to a

in the rest

photo.

SHANGHAIED

By

Home and

late

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

1891, the competitive pressure caused by the Sailor's

compelled ten boardinghouses to leave

ally

themselves with the Sailor's

Home,

their association

giving

it

temporary

domination over the hiring system. In January, 1893, the Ladies'

Seamen's Friend Society applied a ten year lease renewal.

to the

The annual

dollar per year. Supervisor

Board of Supervisors

for

would continue

one

rental

at

James Ryan, of the Seventh Ward,

where the Home was located, strenuously objected to renewal of the lease on the grounds that the superintendent, Captain Melvin

was paid $25,000 annually. This was in 1893 Approval of the lease was recommended anyway. Staples,

A

newspaper account reveals the Sailor's

small rooms, often without

poorly prepared food,

who became

sick.

As

little

windows

Home

in the sleeping

dollars.

contained quarters,

heat and no medical care for those

the Salvation

Army

captain had put

previous superintendent had entered the Sailor's

Home

man and left it rich. The Sailor's Home also had a skillful known as "Young Johnny." This was Johnny Ferem.

it,

the

a poor runner

A

few days later the former chaplain of the Sailor's Home, James B. Campbell, told his version of how the Home was run to the Health and Police Committee of the Board of Supervisors: the Sailor's Home was run for all the money which could be pumped from it. Some of the directors were respectable but they did not spend enough time to learn anything beyond the surface. The only patrons were foreign sailors,

who

did not realize the reputa-

Campbell accused Mrs. Sykes, one of the "ladies," of being in on the mismanagement and financial abuses surrounding the Home. Supervisor Ryan mentioned accusations that certain of the "lady managers" were known to borrow $100

tion of the place.

$200 from the superintendent, with no repayment plan offered or required. Campbell had heard similar rumors. When Campbell tried to correct the abuses he was fired. to

206

Economics Overcome the

Law

Other action against the crimping system was taken when the

Consul General,

British

1902 against two

Courtney Bennett, brought charges

for enticing

The following year

ship Stroma.

Home

men

J.

seamen

in

to desert the British

the consul charged the Sailor's

with operating as a crimp establishment under the guise of

a charitable

and instigated an investigation of the

institution,

The consul

matter by the U. S. Commissioner of Navigation.

presented as evidence a letter from Ferem, then superintendent, to the captain

ors

on

of a British ship, setting out terms for placing

his vessel.

The Home continued

sail31

however.

to operate,

In early 1899, Congress lowered the allowable advance from

two months' wages the

of

abuse

one month's wage

to

sailors.

—

in

an effort to decrease

The land shark combine simply

—

manded and received a "blood-money" bonus make up the difference in their cash-flow.

de-

sufficient

to

The only amusing item concerning the Sailor's Home was noted by the San Francisco Examiner in 1893. The Sailor's Home was ostensibly dedicated to the sobriety of sailors and undertook to have

its

residents take the pledge.

No

saloon existed

on the premises. The charge was made that the chapel was filled on Sundays only by bribing sailors to attend. The most common form of bribe was a drink or its monetary equivalent.

Even

the devastating earthquake and fire that nearly

stroyed the city in April, 1906, did not end shanghaiing.

who

tried to

promised to backed

off.

in 1906,

A

crimp

who vessel. He

board a ship that September met with a skipper fill

him

full

of holes

if

he touched the

Congress made another effort

to

outlaw shanghaiing

and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the act on June

28, 1906. This attempt at eliminating shanghaiing, entitled

Act

to

de-

Prohibit Shanghaiing

in

the

United States,"

"An

imposed

heavier penalties than previous acts (a $1,000 fine and one year in prison),

but focused solely on those

who

enticed a

man

to

go

onto a vessel through threats, misrepresentations or getting the

quarry drunk or under the influence of drugs.

207

It

did not even

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

attempt to prevent payment of advances. But by 1909 the crimp-

was so poor that one Timothy Hawkins, was forced to ship ing business

particularly

infamous one,

33

out.

Shipping masters nevertheless existed as middlemen between

board inghouses and sailors

Act

until

Congress passed the La Follette

1915, to regulate conditions governing maritime employ-

in

ment, authored by Progressive Wisconsin Senator Robert Follette

during

Woodrow

the

presidential

administration

of

M. La

President

Wilson. The La Follette Act eliminated imprisonment

for desertion; prohibited

advance payments; established require-

ments for able-bodied seamen; improved conditions aboard ship for sailors; and, in a gesture to

members of Congress

make

the bill

more acceptable

to

reluctant to help sailors only three short

years after the sinking of the Titanic, set lengthy requirements for life rafts

during World

War

(1914-19) that shanghaiing truly ended as the demand for

sail-

It I

and boats and preservers, and other safety procedures.

ing

was not

until the

crew died. Stories

death of the age of

still

circulated,

sail

however, of shanghaiing

cases for Alaska Packers ships during the 1920s.

San Francisco's waterfront

settled into a

more lawful

with the end of shanghaiing, a system which enslaved

over sixty years

men

for

by the Bay. The system was perpetupower of crimps, motivated by the money

in the city

by the political they once made, and shipowners who cooperated with them.

ated

state

208

Economics Overcome the Law

Footnotes

1

Municipal Reports, 1875-6, pp. 819-21. The Consolidation Act of 1856 for the City and County of San Francisco was passed by the California Legislature in 1856 and

remained the basic framework of municipal government in San Francisco 1898.

The Consolidation Act of 1856 decreased

made every

2 Daily Alta, June 4

May

8,

Ibid, April 9,

until

San Francisco and

low cost government by eliminating duplication. By was woefully inadequate for a large city. See Bullough, pp. 54-7.

effort to achieve

the late 1860s, the Act

3 Ibid,

the size of

8, 1872, p.l, col.2

1871, p.l, col.2 1874, p.l, col.l

5 Ibid, February 27, 1871, p.l, col.6

6

A

Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry Since the Introduction of Steam, Rene de la Pedreja, 1994, p. 568; Daily Alta, August 21, 1884 and de la Pedreja, p. 102 Historical Dictionary of the U.S.

7 Daily Alta, August 7, 1872, p.l, col.l 8 Ibid,

December

3,

1872, p.l, col.2; December 4, 1872, col.l, col.2; December

1872, p.l, col.3 and

9

Ibid,

December

7,

11 Ibid,

December December

5,

10, 1873, p.l, col.4

1872, p.l, col.l; December 8, 1872, p.l, col.2; December 10,

1872, p.l, col.3 and 10 Ibid,

December December

11, 1872, p.l, col.l

12, 1872, p.l, col.l 17, 1872, p.l, col.2;

20, 1872, p.l, col.2; Ibid,

12 The Blind Boss

December

December

19, 1872, p.l, col.2

and December

27, 1872, p.l, col.2

and His Gty, Bullough,

p. 17;

The Daily Alta, August 21, 1879,

p.l, col.l

13 Ibid, January 4, 1873, p.l, col.l; January 6, 1873, p.l, col.l and January 8, 1873, p.l, col.3

14 Ibid, February 28, 1873, p.l, col.3;

March

21, 1873, p.l, col.l and

March

22,

1873, p.l, col.3

15 Ibid,

March

8,

1873, p.l, col.l; March 19, 1873, p.l, col.l and March 20, 1873,

p.l, col.2

16 Ibid, April 9, 1874, p.l, col.l

209

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

17 Daily Alia, September 24, 1889, p.l, col.3; September 25, 1889, p. 8, col.3 and

September 26, 1889, p.l,

col. 4;

Amendments

to the Civil

Code, Twenty-First Ses-

sion, 1875-76, State of California, pp. 78-9

November

18 Ibid, October 20, 1891, p. 4, col. 2,

2, 1891, p. 3, col.3

and November

12, 1891, p.4, col.4

19 The Daily Alia, August 23, 1886, p.2, col.2; August 27, 1886, p.l, col.5 and

20

August 31, 1886, p.l, col.5 September 28, 1886, p.l,

Ibid,

17, 1887, p. 8, col.l;

col. 6

and November

4, 1886, p.2, col.3;

San Francisco Examiner, August

December

19, 1892, p. 4, col.3; Daily

Alta, July 1, 1887, p.l, col.4; July 6, 1887, p.l, col.6; July 7, 1887, p.l, col.6

and July 22, 1887, p.l, col.6 21 Daily Alta, August 21, 1884 and de

22

Ibid,

August

la

Pedreja, p. 102

7, 1884, p.l, col.2; July 17, 1884, p.l, col.3

and August

6, 1884, p.l,

October 25, 1884, p.8, col.l and December 2, 1884, p.l, col.2 23 See de la Pedraja, pp. 336, 56-7. Four sailors signed shipping articles in San Francol.3;

cisco to ship to Chile by

way

of Oregon.

When

their ship, the

Arago, arrived in

and were

Oregon, they deserted. They claimed they had never

left

therefore not subject to arrest. According to de

Pedraja, the outraged captain

decided to streets.

make an example

of the

men by

la

the coastal trade

dragging them in chains through the

Appeals by the Andrew Furuseth's International Seamen's Union brought

the case to the United States

Supreme Court. On January 25, 1897,

rendered their decision (see William Standard, Merchant Seamen:

A

the justices

Short History

of Their Struggle), a decision which organized labor saw as the "'Second Dred Scott Decision.'" The California Legislature passed Assembly Joint Resolution No. 27, expressing

its

indignation at the Court's decision, a decision the Resolution

considered "a menace to the personal rights of every other class of workers."

though shipowners shied away from use of arrest for desertion,

were plentiful, it was not until passage of the La Follette Act onment for desertion in the merchant marine was eliminated. 24 Recollections of the San Francisco Waterfront, 25 Dillon, pp. 197-9 26 Daily Alta, November 24, 1888, p.l, ary

1,

col.4;

p.

in

at least

1915

Al-

when men

that impris-

170

December

29, 1889, p.8, col.3; Janu-

1889, p.2, col.4 and January 2, 1889, p. 7, col.6; San Francisco Examiner,

January 23, 1893, p. 3, col.5; San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1889,

p. 5,

col.5

27 Daily Alta, August 14, 1885, p.4, col.3; November 9, 1889, p.l, col.2 and December 25, 1889, p.4, col.3; September 5, 1885, p.l, col.2; August 26, 1888, p.8, col.3

28

Ibid,

February 26, 1878, p.2, col.3. Menzies' report underestimated the number of

sailors

shipped out in 1890 by a factor of two or three times. According to the Laf-

James Laflin alone shipped out 1900 men and officers or the whaling fleets, paying $70,000 in advances. With five other shipping masters sending seamen out on deepwater and coastal vessels, probably 6,000-8,000 sailors were shipped out. Advances may have been $200,000-$250,000 annually. lin record,

and sealing

210

Economics Overcome the Law

29 The Coast Seamen's Journal, volume IV, no. 33, volume IV, no. 42, p.

p. 4;

volume IV,

no. 36, p. 5

and

p. 3, col.7 and November 10, 1891, San Francisco Examiner, January 23, 1893, p. 3, col. 5; January 28, 1893; September 8, 1893, p.3, col.3 31 San Francisco Call, April 14, 1899, p. 12, col. 7 and April 19, 1899, p. 12, col.2; San Francisco Examiner, July 31, 1894, p.7, col.4; May 27, 1902, p.7, col.6; Morning Call, January 1903 32 San Francisco Examiner, September 8, 1893, p.3, col.3

30 San Francisco Examiner, October 29, 1891, p. 8, col. 4;

33 Interview of Captain James Allen,

Morning

p. 8;

Call, July 24, 1906, p. 12, col.4

34 Manuscript of crews of whaling vessels from the draja, pp. 295-6.

Woodrow Wilson

J.

Porter

Shaw

Library; de la Pe-

waited until one hour before Congress ad-

journed to sign the La Follette Act. Furuseth was allowed to see Wilson to persuade him to sign, and the "Emancipator of the Seamen" reportedly

knees and begged the President to sign. Wilson did; strong legislation

and the death of

sail

ing.

211

this

fell

on

his

time the combination of

sounded the death knell of crimp-

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Drawing and quotations from Gordon Grant's Greasy Luck!, 1932 Choosing whale boat crews . According to marine artist Gordon Grant who made this sketch on board a whaler: "Soon after the ship was on .

.

her course, the crew was mustered and divided into two watches— starboard

and larboard— ..." Grant wrote that, "The mate steered the boat until the harpooner struck the whale. They thereupon changed places and the latter

became tered aft

'boatsteerer.

'

The

boatsteerer ranked next to the officers, were quar-

and had a separate mess."

212

APPENDIX

James Laflin and the Shipping of Whaling Men

Davis Street must have been quite a fascinating area in

in 1867:

year clothier Louis Levy's establishment was at 607

that

Davis, while George Fogle operated from 506 Davis, between

"Shanghai" Brown's

sailors'

board inghouse

Murray's Golden Gate House

at

at

504 and Thomas

510 Davis. For those who

thought they might find refuge across the

street,

William Harris,

another clothier involved with shanghaiing, awaited them at 507 l

Davis.

These shanghaiers and many more signed the pages of the Record Book kept by James Laflin. The Laflin Record gives us a rare glimpse into the operation of shipping sailors on whaling and

from 1886-1890. Many surprises are hidden in the pages of this document of payments to crimps over a four-year period. One of the biggest discoveries is that retail clothiers on the waterfront received a larger proportion of payments of sailors' advance wages than did saloon keepers. Boardinghouse keepers, of course, were paid the largest amount. Not only did sealing vessels

almost one-third of

all

advances

in

213

1886-7 go to

retail clothiers,

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

those payments went primarily into the hands of two

Levy and Gussie gle,

Stein.

The

Laflin Record indicates

—Louis

men

George Fo-

Gussie Stein and Louis Levy were three clothiers

plemented

their

income by bringing

in

who

sup-

new whaling men.

Louis Levy used newspaper "Help Wanted" ads to recruit

young men to

for whalers. In

1890 Walter Noble Burns responded

such an ad for "the adventure of the thing"

shanghaied. Burns wrote a book,

— he was

not

One Year On A Whaler, docu-

menting his experiences. At the end of the voyage, under Captain

William T. Shorey, Burns ran from the whaling bark Alexander, and never

As

set foot

on a whaler

for Levy, he

was

2

again.

using the want ad method for re-

still

cruiting whaling crews in 1902.

One such ad

read:

"WANTED—Young men to go on a cruise Seas.

No

in the

South

experience required. Apply to L. Levy,

Battery and Jackson streets."

The crew of

John and Winthrop complained to the press in Honolulu that of twenty-four seamen on board the bark, nineteen had been shanghaied by Levy with the simple want ad above. Levy took the $40 advance money which was supposed to go to each man and kept it. When the men opened the bags their friend Louis Levy had given them for their advance, they found one pair of heavy shoes, two pairs of stockings, one suit of heavy underwear, one light woolen cap and one bottle of whiskey. This was supposed to get them through a winter in the Arctic. One crewman vowed not to touch his bag, but would return the contents on his arrival in San Francisco back to his friend Levy. None of the men aboard the John and Winthrop were able to escape, however.

The

the

3

by the Laflin record demonstrate the complexities of shanghaiing in San Francisco in the late 1890s. A man who signed as Captain Jack shipped only Japanese men. He details revealed

214

Appendix

San Francisco Maritime Museum N.H.P.

A

rare photograph of the businesses of two long-time crimps side-

by-side ... In 1907, after the earthquake and north of Market sailors' boardinghouses, John

fire

had destroyed

Kremke and Joe

all

of the

Harris set

up shop at 407 and 409 Drurnm Street. Kremke, who had received a payment from long-time shanghaier James Laflin as early as 1887, used the popular name Young America Saloon— two other saloons with the same

name

existed at this time. Joe Harris supplied clothing to sailors, usually

at inflated prices.

John Ryan and John Anderson, both very bad apples

in the shang-

haiing community, operated separate sailors' boardinghouses at these addresses in the early 1870s.

Even

the hellish inferno

which wiped most of

San Francisco from the face of the earth could not eliminate the crimps, rose like mutant phoenixes from the ashes of the city by the Bay.

who

215

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

signed in English as Captain Jack, and in Chinese with the char-

meaning Japan.

acters

A

number of women received advances

for

—Mrs.

Gomes,' Mrs. Edgar's and Mrs. Stein's names are found frequently in the pages of the Laflin Record. Mrs. Gomes made her mark, a small x, when she was paid. Elizabeth Murray almost always picked up the advances in her

sailors delivered

—

husband Tom's name

or she, afraid he would drink up

before

Tom

down

either he sent her

the

all

to get the

money

money, got the payments

could.

Representatives of the Sailor's

Home

grace the pages of the

Record. Daniel Swannack and Leroy D. Fletcher, successive superintendents of the

Home,

received payments, but usually their

runner John Ferem, signed for the due

name

as

Fjerem

in the 1880s;

ous of the Sailor's Home's latter

years of

its

bills.

Ferem wrote

his

he became one of the most notori-

many

notorious superintendents in the

existence.

Harry "Horseshoe" Brown, Nils "Shanghai" Nelson, Dick Ahlers of the Old Ship Saloon,

Thomas Murray,

Ed Mordaunt, John

Billy Jordan, John Curtin,

T. Callender,

Harry Lewis, George

Lewis, Martin Brunsen and John Cardoza are famous shanghaiers

who autographed brought

Laflin's

in sailors.

payments received when they signature is so irregular, sometimes

book

Curtin 's

for

was either illiterate, had a neurological problem or was very drunk when he came to Laflin's shipping office. It is impossible to say what percentage of the men shipped by Laflin were shanghaied. Henry Ewald, who was sent out as a greenhand and surgeon by Louis Levy, could not have gone willingly unless he were a very strange character. Ewald, who left San Francisco on December not even complete, that

it

is

safe to conclude John

21, 1889, on the bark Eliza, brought

$50

for Levy.

Five separate tables follow the footnotes of

Table

1

includes payments

made

to the top

this

twenty shanghaiers

1886 and 1890. Harry "Horseshoe" Brown leads the

216

appendix.

list in

in

1890,

Appendix

receiving 182 of the 1,169 advances, for 16 percent of

vances and $9,310, 13 percent of the

by Laflin

in 1890.

total

all

ad-

of $71,066.55 paid out

Louis Levy received 101

sailors'

advances in

1890, while Nils "Shanghai" Nelson was third with 62 advances.

Mrs. Edgar struck a blow for early women's equality, being paid for

46 advances, placing her Table 2

James Laflin

lists

*

in fourth place.

female shanghaiers receiving advances from

1887 and 1890.

in

Table 3 sorts payment of advances four occupational

in

our two study years by

groups for those individuals

who

could be

San Francisco City Directories. Not surprisingly, sailors' boardinghouse keepers and shipping masters were paid more advances than anyone else, 438 out of 1,169 in 1890, 37 identified in

percent of the

total.

many advances as saloonkeepers in both Louis Levy was paid more money $5,940 in 1887

more than twice ods.

Unexpectedly, clothing outfitters received

as

—

—

peri-

than

any other shanghaier. Table 4 presents the average advance paid by occupational position.

Table 5 includes raw data from the Laflin Record for 1887 and 1890 of all advances paid by Laflin. It is sorted by crimp

name, and includes occupation, number of and dollar amount of advances received in both years, and compares 1890 to 1887.

James Laflin received the salutation of captain in later life, a term of respect for long-time inhabitants of San Francisco's waterfront.

73.

Captain James Laflin died June 14, 1905, at the age of

4

217

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Footnotes

1

1867 Langley, San Francisco City Directory

2 Walter Noble Burns, One Year

On A Whaler and

United States Criminal Case

#2822, Criminal Register #5, San Francisco, California. Shorey was charged with cruelty to

seaman John Rentford

cruelty. Rentford tain's revolver,

after this

voyage, Shorey's second offense for

charged Shorey with assaulting him with the barrel of the cap-

then inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on Rentford by forc-

work constantly on deck for twenty-four consecutive days, with no more than four hours of sleep a night. Peter Laflin, James son, acted as surety for Shorey. Even though Rentford produced an eyewitness to the beating, the court found Shorey, a black man, not guilty. Burns provides a description of the assault ing the sailor to

and subsequent punishment

in his book.

3 Charles Page Scrapbook, Vol. 1, p. 22,

J.

Porter

Shaw Library

4 San Francisco City Directories 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1890-95, Great Register of Voters, 1873, San Francisco Chronicle, June 15, 1905, p. 13, col. 3 and Morning Call,

June 15, 1905, p.5, col.3

218

Table 1 Top 20 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James

1887

Crimp Name

Occupation

Harry "Horseshoe"

Sailors'

Brown

keeper

Louis Levy

Clothier

Nil "Shanghai"

Sailors'

Nelson

keeper

Woodworth

Sailors'

and 1890

1890

# of Adv.

Amount

Received

Received Received Received Over

#of

Amount

boardinghouse

42

$2,070

182

$9,310

68 29

$5,940

101

boardinghouse

$1,420

62

boardinghouse

30

$1,645

boardinghouse

10

$800

38

$2,535

39

4

$160

31

28 $1,150

$750

Mrs. Edgar J.

Laflin, 1887

1890 Over/Under

1887

140

$7,240

$7,285

33

$1,345

$3,250

33

$1,830

46

$2,735

46

$2,735

43

$2,500

13

$855

42

$1,830

42

$1,830

41

$2,615

31

$1,815

$2,717

1

$182

$1,555

27

$1,395

$1,485

28

$1,485

23

$1,195

4

$45

22

$1,390

15

$640

20

$1,445

20

$1,445

keeper

Sam Wynn Thomas Murray

Sailors'

keeper Gussie Stein

Clothier

Martin Brunsen

Saloon

John

W. Wilson

Peter Gaffhey

Sailors'

boardinghouse

19

keeper

Dick Ahlers

Old Ship Saloon

Pete

McMahon

Luis

Nunez

Clothier

John

W. Williams

Sailors'

7

2

$270 $565

19

$1,509

17

6

19

$1,345

13

$1,239 $780

Clothier

11

$1,265

18

$2,532

7

$1,267

Porter

7

$620

18

$1,066

11

18

$910

18

$446 $910

boardinghouse

keeper

Ed Frank & Son Manuel Brooks George Brown

M.

Freitas

Ed Mordaunt

Sailors'

boardinghouse

2

$170

16

$1,450

14

$1,280

27

$1,560

15

$860

(12)

($700)

keeper

Total

302

219

$20,920

803

$48,984

501

$28,064

Table 2 Female Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James

1887

Crimp Name

Magdalena Lutz Maria Santa Williams

Occupation

1890

Amount

# of Adv.

Amount

Received

Received

Received

Received

$100.00

1

Mrs. A. Murphy Mrs. Cathcart

1

60.00

Mrs. Cohen

6

680.00

Mrs. Cushing

1

70.00

Mrs. Edgar

2 3

200.00

3

210.00

1

50.00

Mrs. Greenway Mrs. Hamilton Mrs. Harris

Mrs. Harty Mrs. Jackson

1

Mrs. M. Lutz

1

40.00

Mrs. Martindale

1

100.00

Mrs. Mary Martin Mrs. McCarthy

Mrs. Roby

2

100.00

1

13.00

1

13.00

150.00

1

150.00

1

1

100.00

1

100.00

(1)

(60.00)

(5)

(630.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(70.00)

2,735.00

46

2,735.00

1

30.00

1

30.00

(2)

(100.00)

1

60.00

1

60.00

8

480.00

5

280.00

1

25.00

200.00

25.00 (210.00)

1

200.00

(1)

(50.00)

30.00

30.00

1

1

30.00

1

30.00

(1)

(40.00)

(1)

(100.00)

1

50.00

(2)

(100.00)

1

140.00

(1)

(50.00)

2

80.00

50.00

1

140.00

2

80.00

2

100.00

50.00

1

1

(3)

1

100.00

Mrs. Roeben

Mrs. Roehi

$(100.00)

1

1

Mrs. Powell

1887

(1)

1

Mrs. Isabel Kerr

Over/

$100.00

100.00

Mrs. Gillespie

1890 Over/Under

1

46

Mrs. F. Kane

Mrs. Anna Gomes

and 1890

# of Adv.

Mary Mathewson Miss Nettie Choen

Mrs. Gavin

Laflin, 1887

(1)

1

Mrs. Sheehan

2

100.00

7

360.00

Mrs. Sweeney

3

185.00

(3)

(185.00)

Mrs. Whalen

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

1

30.00

(ID

(640.00)

1

185.00

41

$2,263.00

Mrs. Stein

7

Mrs. Williams

Mrs. Wright Pauline

Total

1

11

30.00

640.00

Lang 39

360.00

$2,685.00

220

1

185.00

80

$4,948.00

Table 3 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890

1887

Crimp Name

Occupation

1890

# of

Amount

# of

Amount

Rec'd

Rec'd

Rec'd

Rec'd

Dick Ahlers

Saloon

7

$750.00

D. Heins

Saloon

3

Saloon

2

Fred

Nobman

22

$1,390.00

1890 Over/Under 1887 15

$640.00

610.00

(3)

(610.00)

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

Martin Brunsen

Saloon

4

160.00

31

1,555.00

27

1,395.00

Ed Melander

Saloon

10

725.00

3

150.00

(7)

(575.00)

G. Theopolis

Saloon

10

1,015.00

(10)

(1,015.00)

Jim Barton

Saloon

6

340.00

(6)

(340.00)

Drake

Saloon

4

280.00

(4)

(280.00)

Saloon

3

90.00

(3)

(90.00)

49

$4,070.00

J.

Otto

W.

Lilkenley

Subtotal

56

$3,095.00

($975.00)

Purdy

Runner

3

$195.00

(3)

($195.00)

F.

Walton

Shipping master

4

230.00

(4)

(230.00)

J.

Cushing

Shipping agent

2

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

J.

Henry Brown Nils Nelson

Sailors' b.h.

42 29

2,070.00

182

9,310.00

140

7,240.00

Sailors' b.h.

1,420.00

62

3,250.00

33

1,830.00

Woodworth Thomas Murray

Sailors' b.h.

30

1,645.00

43

2,500.00

13

855.00

Sailors' b.h.

10

800.00

41

2,615.00

31

1,815.00

Peter Gaffhey

Sailors' b.h.

19

1,150.00

23

1,195.00

4

45.00

W. Williams W.Lane

Sailors' b.h.

6

565.00

19

1,345.00

13

780.00

Sailors' b.h.

33

1,740.00

15

775.00

(18)

(965.00)

Ed Mordaunt

Sailors' b.h.

27

1,560.00

15

860.00

(12)

(700.00)

Billy Jordan

Sailors' b.h.

7

325.00

8

400.00

1

75.00

William

Sailors' b.h.

13

655.00

7

360.00

(6)

(295.00)

Thompson M. Martin

Sailors' b.h.

3

180.00

7

535.00

4

355.00

John Curtin

Sailors' b.h.

6

370.00

5

261.50

(1)

(108.50)

George Lewis Harry Lewis

Sailors' b.h.

2

100.00

5

330.00

3

230.00

Sailors' b.h.

6

320.00

2

110.00

(4)

(210.00)

Joseph Franklin

Sailors' b.h.

1

100.00

2

100.00

1

John T. Callender

Sailors' b.h.

13

1,045.00

1

100.00

(12)

J.

John

221

(945.00)

Table 3 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890

Mackey David Swannack

Sailors' b.h.

7

310.00

(6)

(260.00)

Sailors' b.h.

15

900.00

(15)

(900.00)

John Williams

Sailors' b.h.

14

1,345.00

(14)

(1,345.00)

W. Williams

Sailors' b.h.

10

460.00

(10)

(460.00)

Charles Olson

Sailors' b.h.

8

545.00

(8)

(545.00)

John Munroe

Sailors' b.h.

6

400.00

(6)

(400.00)

Cunha

Sailors' b.h.

5

580.00

(5)

(580.00)

Charles Reed

Sailors' b.h.

4

215.00

(4)

(215.00)

Henry Brown #1

Sailors' b.h.

4

185.00

(4)

(185.00)

John Cardoza

Sailors' b.h.

3

250.00

(3)

(250.00)

Joe Enos

Sailors' b.h.

2

350.00

(2)

(350.00)

George Roeben

Sailors' b.h.

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Subtotal

335

$20,160.00

438

$24,096.50

103

$3,936.50

Louis Levy

Clothier

68

$5,940.00

101

$7,285.00

33

$1,345.00

Gussie Stein

Clothier

38

2,535.00

39

2,717.00

1

182.00

Luis Nunez

Clothier

2

270.00

19

1,509.00

17

1,239.00

2532 600 30

7

1,267.00

P.

F.

Ed Frank

& Son

1

50.00

Clothier

11

1265

18

Samuel Lanzet

Clothier

8

945

8

George Fogel John Kremke

Clothier

5

285

1

Clothier

1

100

Subtotal

133

$11,340.00

186

Porter

7 8

$620.00 400

18

Laborer

Subtotal

15

1020

18

1066

11

46

532

$36,590.00

698

$42,930.50

174

$6,340.50

Manuel Brooks Ben Reyes

Total

222

(345.00) (4)

(255.00)

(1)

(100.00)

$14,673.00

53

$3,333.00

$1,066.00

11

$446.00 (400.00)

Table 4 Average Advance Paid per Position by James Laflin, 1887 # of Advances Position in

Crew

Paid

Steward

Amount

26

$103.10

19

46.58

17

44.12

464

50.16

Previous boatsteerer

7

72.86

Hunter

3

33.33

55

56.18

Fireman

13

108.50

Engineer

9

106.70

21

100.20

26

93.46

Boy

Steerage

Seaman (ordinary) Seaman

(able bodied)

Greenhand

Cooper

was

(1

asst carpenter)

(4 not paid

Cook/Steward

an advance)

(5 not paid

an advance)

Chief Engineer

6

241.70

Carpenter (1 no advance)

8

105.00

Cabin Boy

22

48.16

Blacksmith

13

79.62

Asst Engineer

8

135.00

Asst Cooper, blacksmith

2

57.50

5th mate (2 no advance)

10

197.50

no advance)

10

212.00

3rd mate (17 no advance)

10

246.00

2nd mate (16 no advance)

12

297.10

6

229.00

767

$72.06

4th mate (1

1st

1

mate (24 no advance)

Total

223

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 1887

Crimp Name

29 Pacific

St.

A. Baker

1890

#of

Amount

#of

Amount

Reed

Rec'd

Reed

Rec'd

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

1

75.00

(1)

(75.00)

A. Bander A. Franklin A. Greenberg

A. Jackson

1

60.00

A. Johnson

A. Lopes

A.M. Reis A.P.

1890 o/(u)1887

1

1

60.00

1

60.00

2

95.00

2

95.00

1

30.00

1

50.00

5

250.00

2

110.00

60.00

McDonald

1

50.00

1 -

30.00 (10.00)

5

250.00

2

110.00

(1)

(60.00)

1

50.00

A.W. Smith

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

Abbott

2

120.00

(2)

(120.00)

1

50.00

Abelman Advance but not

1

to

Ah Poo

crimp

3

100.00

(3)

(100.00)

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

Al White

Anna Gomes

50.00

2 2

70.00

100.00

2

70.00

(2)

(100.00)

Antonio Prato

1

50.00

1

50.00

Antonio Vierra

2

170.00

2

170.00

August Prato

1

50.00

1

50.00

(2)

(110.00)

1

20.00

B. Baroni

B.

2

110.00

Dauman

1

20.00

B. Hickey

1

150.00

(1)

(150.00)

Ben Prages

1

65.00

(1)

(65.00)

Ben Reyes

8

400.00

Ben Billy

Sales

Jordan

7

325.00

C. Anderson C.

Brown

C. Byrne

1

(8)

(400.00)

10

560.00

10

560.00

8

400.00

1

75.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

60.00

C. Dickey

1

50.00

(1)

(60.00)

2

25.00

2

25.00

(1)

(30.00)

C. Schroeder

1

50.00

1

50.00

C. Sorenson

1

50.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

C. Peterson

1

30.00

C. Tanaka

C.A. Richter C.F.

Dean

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

10

680.00

(10)

(680.00)

4

200.00

C.J. Christenson

4

224

200.00

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Crew

Capt.

Capt. Hallett Capt. Jack Capt. L. Williams

1

20.00

1

20.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

16

815.00

(16)

(815.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

8

713.05

Capt. Lewis

8

713.05

(1)

(50.00)

Capt. Thaxter

1

100.00

1

100.00

Capt. William

1

20.00

1

20.00

Carroll

1

25.00

1

25.00

McKenna

Capt.

1

50.00

Cash

1

45.00

(1)

(45.00)

Charles Olson

8

545.00

(8)

(545.00)

Charles Reed

4

215.00

(4)

(215.00)

Charles Boiling

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

Charles Chepplers

1

40.00

1

40.00

(1)

(60.00)

Charles Porter

1

60.00

Coleman

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

Collier

1

40.00

(1)

(40.00)

(100.00)

D. Burk

1

100.00

(1)

D. Heins

3

610.00

(3)

(610.00)

D. O'Connell

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

15

900.00

7

750.00

D. Terullo

David Swannack

1

Delfino Lopes

Dick Ahlers

100.00

1

100.00

(15)

(900.00)

1

50.00

1

50.00

22

1,390.00

15

640.00

Dr. Smith

1

E. Johnson

2

120.00

(2)

(120.00)

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

E.

Morton

(1)

E. Peterson

-

1

50.00

1

50.00

1

20.00

1

20.00

E.H. Hanson

1

100.00

1

100.00

E.O. Wester

1

30.00

1

30.00

18

2,532.00

7

1,267.00

1

50.00

E.B.

Ed Ed Ed Ed

Dean

Frank

& Son

11

1,265.00

Jones

1

50.00

Melander

10

725.00

3

150.00

(7)

(575.00)

Mordaunt

27

1,560.00

15

860.00

(12)

(700.00)

1

175.00

1

175.00

F.

Brightman

F.

Conception

F.

Cunha

F. Fogel

1

(1)

-

5

580.00

(5)

(580.00)

4

325.00

(4)

(325.00)

F.

Martin

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

F.

Walton

4

230.00

(4)

(230.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Fogel

225

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Frank Marshall Fred

1

Nobman

Freeman G.

Digham

G. Franklin

50.00

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

120.00

(1)

(120.00)

2

100.00

(1)

(120.00)

1

10

2

100.00

7

210.00

120.00

G. Strand G. Theopolis

1

2

G. O'Brien G. Samstrither

50.00

1,015.00

G.M. Wilson Gardner

1

10.00

Geo. McLaughlin

1

50.00

George Brown George Cashell

1

50.00

1

25.00

7

210.00

(10)

(1,015.00)

1

50.00

-

15.00

(1)

(50.00)

18

910.00

18

910.00

3

150.00

3

150.00

George Fogel

5

285.00

1

30.00

(4)

(255.00)

George Lewis

2

100.00

5

330.00

3

230.00

George Roeben

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

George T. LeFleche

2

2

Ginger Malag

1

70.00

Gorman

2

50.00

Gray

& Mack

1

50.00

1

-

70.00

2

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Gus A. Roemer

1

150.00

1

150.00

Gus Johnson

2

70.00

2

70.00

3

350.00

Gus Sound Gussie Stein

38

2,535.00

3

350.00

38

2,717.00

182.00

-

Guthrie

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

H. Bulton

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

9

560.00

H.

Kneeman

H. Koizimi

9

H. Kolkstein H.

Krumman

H. Lettici

560.00

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

2

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

(1)

(300.00)

(2)

(250.00)

H. Lichow

1

300.00

H. Lithier

2

250.00

H. Lorentzen

1

20.00

1

20.00

H. Reuther (572 Folsom)

2

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

H. Roeben

1

150.00

(1)

(150.00)

1

150.00

6

320.00

H. Wilson

8

Hamilton

Harry Lewis

Henry "Shanghai

"

Brown

42

2,070.00

226

2

182

300.00

110.00 9,310.00

8

300.00

(1)

(150.00)

(4)

(210.00)

140

7,240.00

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Henry Bradhoff

4

200.00

(4)

(200.00)

4

185.00

(4)

(185.00)

Henry Stumer

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Hukey

1

150.00

(1)

(150.00)

Henry Brown No.

[.

1

Baker

1

50.00

1

50.00

Boyes

1

30.00

1

30.00 (60.00)

Cohen

1

60.00

(1)

Colbert

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Cushing

2

100.00

(2)

(100.00)

Despasath

3

150.00

Drake

4

280.00

Ferguson

1

100.00

Gillison

1

150.00

Duffy

12

555.00

(2)

(25.00)

(4)

(280.00)

12

555.00

(1)

(100.00)

(1)

(150.00)

4

210.00

4

210.00

Keenan

2

150.00

2

150.00

1

250.00

Meyer

1

300.00

2

180.00

Munroe [.

125.00

Hines

Knowland I.

1

Munson Oppenheimer

I.

Purdy

I.

Woodworm

3

30

100.00

2

230.00

195.00

Sheehan

.C.

1

1,645.00

Herold

.H. Seebe

.M. Johnson

1

250.00

(1)

(300.00)

1

100.00

(2)

(180.00)

2

230.00

(3)

(195.00)

1

50.00

1

50.00

43

2,500.00

13

855.00

1

75.00

1

75.00

1

50.00

1

50.00

1

30.00

1

30.00

13

1,110.00

12

1,010.00

(1)

(100.00)

3

81.20

3

81.20

James Murray

1

30.00

1

30.00

James Osranurr

1

30.00

1

30.00 (60.00)

Jacob Graber Jacob

Home

1

100.00

1

100.00

lames Laflin

James Bryne

1

60.00

(1)

James Douglas

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

6

340.00

(6)

(340.00)

James Jerry

Wakeman Sheen

Jim Barton Jor

Antone

Joe

Enos

Joe Ferro

13

2

350.00

10

735.00

2

200.00

Joe Peters

John Admith

227

925.00

1

180.00

2

310.00

13

925.00

(2)

(350.00)

(9)

(555.00)

2

310.00

(2)

(200.00)

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 John Cardoza

3

250.00

John Curtin

6

370.00

(3)

(250.00)

5

261.50

(1)

(108.50)

John D. Griffin

1

80.00

1

80.00

John Finn

1

30.00

1

30.00

1

50.00

John Kane John Kremke

1

100.00

John Langford John Miller John Munroe

6

400.00

John O'Brien

2

110.00

John T. Callender

13

1,045.00

John T. Williams

W. Williams John W. Wilson

John

John Walker John Williams Joseph "Franchy" Franklin L.

Newman

6

565.00

4

230.00

1

150.00

1

70.00

1

50.00

(1)

(100.00)

4

230.00

1

150.00

(6)

(400.00)

(1)

(40.00)

1

100.00

(12)

(945.00)

3

225.00

3

225.00

19

1,345.00

13

780.00

28

1,485.00

28

1,485.00

1

30.00

(1)

(30.00)

14

1,345.00

(14)

(1,345.00)

1

100.00

1

100.00

L. Shillegar

2

100.00

2

60.00

1

(1)

-

(100.00)

2

60.00

Lamones

1

60.00

(1)

(60.00)

Lisbon House-John Cardoza

1

125.00

(1)

(125.00)

68

5,940.00

Louis Banner Louis Levy Louis Perralto

Niman

1

50.00

Luis Nunez

2

270.00

M. Amarat

1

65.00

Luis

M. Dotles& Co. M. Freitas M. Hartman M. Kilden

M. M. M. M. M.

2

55.00

2

55.00

101

7,285.00

33

1,345.00

2

115.00

2

115.00

19

1,509.00

1

50.00

2

60.00

2

170.00

16

1,450.00

1

50.00

1

75.00

1

500.00

Lopes Martin

3

180.00

McCarthy

1

90.00

2

100.00

7

535.00

(1)

(50.00)

17

1,239.00

(1)

(65.00)

1

14

10.00

1,280.00

25.00

-

(1)

(500.00)

2

100.00

4

355.00

(1)

(90.00)

1

50.00

1

50.00

(1)

(60.00)

M.B. Almada

1

20.00

1

20.00

M.J. Flavin

1

50.00

1

50.00

0)

(100.00)

Silva

Smith

1

60.00

Magdalena Lutz

1

100.00

Manuel Brooks

7

620.00

Manuel

1

70.00

Silva

Maria Santa Williams

18

1

228

1,066.00

100.00

11

446.00

(1)

(70.00)

1

100.00

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Martin Brunsen

4

1,555.00

27

1,395.00

Martin Joseph

60.00

1

60.00

Mary Mathews on

13.00

1

13.00

Maurice Roach

48.80

1

48.80

(3)

(320.00)

McCarthy

3

160.00

31

320.00 80.00

1

80.00

Miss Nettie Choen

150.00

1

150.00

Morgan

125.00

1

125.00

(1)

(120.00)

Mellocraft

Mr. Butler

1

120.00

Mrs. Cathcart

1

60.00

Mrs. Cohen

6

680.00

Mrs. Cushing

1

70.00

Mrs. A. Murphy

100.00

Mrs. Edgar

50.00

46

Mrs. F. Kane Mrs. Gavin

2

Mrs. Gomes (Anna?)

1

100.00

Mrs. Greenway Mrs. Hamilton

3

Mrs. Harty

(70.00)

2,735.00

30.00

1

30.00

(2)

(100.00)

60.00

1

60.00

480.00

7

380.00

25.00

1

25.00

(3)

(210.00)

50.00

Mrs. Isabel Kerr

(630.00)

46

200.00 1

(5) (1)

210.00

Mrs. Harris

100.00 (60.00)

2,735.00

100.00

Mrs. Gillespie

1

(1)

30.00

1

200.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

30.00

1

30.00

Mrs. M. Lutz

1

40.00

(1)

(40.00)

Mrs. Martindale

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

2

100.00

Mrs. Jackson

30.00

Mrs. Mary Martin Mrs. McCarthy

50.00

Mrs. Powell Mrs. Roby

140.00 1

50.00

Mrs. Roeben Mrs. Roehi

2

Mrs. Stein Mrs. Sweeney

3

185.00

Mrs. Whalen

1

100.00

Mrs. Williams 11

50.00 (100.00)

1

140.00

(1)

(50.00)

2

80.00

(1)

1

Mrs. Sheehan

Mrs. Wright

80.00

1

(2)

2

100.00

7

360.00

1

30.00

1

180.00

640.00

N. Muller

2

-

100.00

7

360.00

(3)

(185.00)

(1)

(100.00)

1

30.00

(ID

(640.00)

1

180.00

N. Peterson

1

125.00

(1)

(125.00)

N. Snyder

1

35.00

(1)

(35.00)

229

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Nils "Shanghai"

No adavnce

Nelson

or monthly

29

wage

Other-officers, boatsteerers, et al

Otto

W.

Lilkenly

Mackey

P.

P. A. Darnell

1,420.00

Pete

(138) (121) (3)

(90.00)

7

310.00

(6)

(260.00)

1

100.00

9

19

1,150.00

Sweeney

R.V. Silveira

R.W. Smith Roeben Rogers

1

1

&

Label

S.

Santos

S.

Simonds

5

Home Sam Wynn Sailor's

T.

Ahlman

Thomas

185.00

1

185.00

(9)

(530.00)

20

1,445.00

20

1,445.00

23

1,195.00

4

45.00

3

150.00

3

150.00

250.00

1

250.00

1

10

500.00

10

500.00

12

990.00

12

990.00

(1)

(60.00)

1

60.00

1

50.00

1

30.00

1

15.00

1

60.00

(1)

(150.00)

1

50.00

1

30.00

(5)

(310.00)

1

15.00

200.00

1

200.00

1

2

100.00

2

100.00

42

1,830.00

42

1,830.00

-

(345.00)

8

600.00

1

50.00

2

60.00

1

1

15.00

1

15.00

(1)

(100.00)

1

100.00

10.00

1

40.00

1

40.00

41

2,615.00

31

1,815.00

2

100.00

2

100.00

10

800.00

Bennett

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Boundy

1

100.00

(1)

(100.00)

Britton

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

50.00

V. Pangolini

W. W. W. W. W. W. W. W.

240.00

1

945.00

C. Fry

Thomas Murray

5

8

T. O'Neil

T.F. Cunha

(100.00)

240.00

310.00

S.A. Nunes

Samuel Lanzet

(1)

5

150.00

O'Brien

S.

50.00

60.00

& Roposa

Rodriques

(16,135.00)

1

530.00

R. Lavigne R.

-

90.00

Cohen

R.

1,830.00

3

McMahon

Peter Gaffney

33

16,135.00

Lang

Pedro Silva

3,250.00

121

P.A. Johnson Pauline

62

138

Graham Laflin

Lane

Shaw Williams

W.E. Maher W.H. Huges

1

50.00

5

250.00

5

250.00

1,740.00

15

775.00

(18)

(965.00)

1

50.00

5

250.00

4

200.00

10

460.00

(10)

(460.00)

33

1

1

50.00

230

50.00

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

Table 5 Shanghaiers Receiving Advances from James Laflin, 1887 and 1890 Walter Benson

Watson William Thompson

Wilson

Wm. Wm. Wm. Wm. Wm.

5

3

130.00

13

655.00

2

110.00

Bendt Britton

1

7

360.00

1

50.00

50.00

Clark

McCarthy Sharo

195.00

4

200.00

1005

68,070.00

231

1

50.00

2

100.00

1168

71,066.55

5

195.00

(3)

(130.00)

(6)

(295.00)

(2)

(110.00)

1

50.00

(1)

(50.00)

1

50.00

2

100.00

(4)

(200.00)

163

2,996.55

Glossary

Advance Money Two months advance wages was given in a sailor's name by shipowners during most of the late 19th century. The advance was intended to outfit the sailor for his trip, settle any bills

due to original creditors and provide for the man's family

while he was

two

at sea. In practice, especially in

months

was

advance

issued

directly

San Francisco, the to

the

sailors'

boardinghouse master or other shanghaier. The sailor never saw the

money.

Articles of

Agreement The document containing

to the terms of

crew.

all

particulars relating

agreement between the master of the vessel and the

Sometimes called

ship's

articles

or shipping articles.

It

all members of amount of wages to be received and provisions to be served. Articles of Agreement were considered to form a legally binding contract in the 19th century— frequently a shanghaied man's signature was forged to Articles and the courts forced a man to go to sea, if he were to seek a legal remedy. International Maritime Dictionary

contained the nature, description and capacity of the crew, the

Blood-Money Fee given by

a shipmaster to a crimp or boardinghouse

keeper for the procurement of a seaman. International Maritime Dictionary. Blood-money

came

to have

more

along the San Francisco waterfront: to some

specialized meanings

meant a bonus paid to shanghaiers when demand for sailors was strong, over and above the two months advance money; when demand for seamen was slow, reverse blood-money was frequently paid by

232

it

Glossary

boardinghouse keepers to captains, especially of British ships, to get rid of the hungry sailors with no way of paying off their bills.

Crimp Someone, who by

force or trickery, persuades

men

to serve in

navy or merchant marine. The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea notes that the first usage of the word crimp, in

the army,

this

occurs in 1638. By the late 19th and early 20th San Francisco had become the most notorious port in

sense,

centuries,

the world for crimping.

Forecastle Usually abbreviated to fo'c'sle, or focscle, in maritime

The

literature.

formed the

forecastle raised deck, at the fore end of the vessel,

living quarters for

crew members, and was cramped,

dank, dirty, and frequently, foul smelling.

Gunwale The upper edge of

the vessel's or boat's side. International

Maritime Dictionary

boarding" The practice by Whitehall boatmen, the runners they carried and boardinghouse masters of coming aboard an incoming vessel before the vessel was securely tied up at its dock. Early California law sought to control shanghaiing— enticing

"Illegal

crewmen

to desert their ship with promises of a

or a good

drunk— by making boarding

good job, women

a vessel without permission

of the captain a criminal misdemeanor.

Impressment Forced service in the British military forces. The Parliamentary legality was first set down in 1556. Impressing resistant Americans into the Royal Navy became a significant cause for the

Runner

A

of 1812.

runner operated between a business on shore and ships

arriving in

could

War

be

San Francisco. The business the runner represented chandlery or a sailors' ship a meat market,

boardinghouse. Sailors' boardinghouse runners did the dirty work of the shanghaiing trade— they gave bad whiskey to incoming sailors,

making

it

easier to entice

233

men

to desert their ship

and

SHANGHAIED

leave behind

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

wages due. These same runners doubled

the

as

muscle which enforced the bidding of the boardinghouse master.

boardinghouse keeper One who operates a boardinghouse catering to sailors. The bulk of shanghaiing was done by sailors'

Sailors'

boardinghouse keepers or their runners.

Few

working-class

men

women

could buy a home in the 19th century and apartments or were too expensive for the lower working-class. Sailors fell into this category. Hundreds of boardinghouses served the needs of lower working-class, and low class, individuals. Along the waterfront, both north of Market and south of Market, more than fifty boardinghouses existed which provided food and lodgings to or

flats

sailors.

The master made

sure he had the

first

a boarder out as a sailor, and claim one or

opportunity to ship

two months of

the

sailors' pay.

Shanghaiing The term coined in San Francisco for the older usage, crimping— namely, someone taken by force or trickery to serve on a board a vessel. The Pacific voyage to Shanghai was indirect, often requiring a trip around the world to return to San Francisco; surviving such a voyage was not assured.

Shipping master The shipping master acted as go-between, or market maker, for ships' captains and shipowners on the demand and

sailors'

boardinghouse masters and other approved providers

of sailors during the days of shanghaiing. for a sailor to get a job like

side,

It

was

all

but impossible

by approaching a captain directly in

cities

San Francisco, where crimps had tremendous economic and

political clout.

Shipping masters like

Tommy

Chandler or James Laflin

signed contracts with agents of shipowners to supply their vessels

with sailors in port. The shipping master position was

much more

prestigious than the average sailors' boardinghouse

keeper— the

shipping master decided

how much

business each shanghaier got

when crew was needed. Old business associates of Laflin's like Harry "Horseshoe" Brown and Nils "Shanghai" Nelson got the lion's share.

234

Glossary

Slopchest

A

chest

containing

a

complement of

oilskins, tobacco, blankets, etc. for the use of

contents

may be

sold during the voyage to

clothing,

seamen.

boots,

Any

members of

of the

the crew.

International Maritime Dictionary. Typically, 19th century ships

deducted any slopchest purchases from the wages due a

The combination of sailor,

sailor.

slopchest deductions for a poorly outfitted

sometimes priced

at three

or

more times

their value,

and

which the boardinghouse keeper received, was paid off with next to nothing at voyage's end.

the sailor's advance,

meant the

sailor

Whitehall boats Most authorities agree that the Whitehall boat was perfected near Whitehall Landing in

time of the

War

of 1812.

Tom

New York

harbor, near the

Mendenhall, in his book

A

Short

History of American Rowing, refers to passengers in Whitehall boats exhorting their boatmen to race one another in the 1790s.

plumb stem and wineglass transom, these relatively made perfect harbor boats. The Whitehall became

Built with a light

craft

extremely popular in Francisco, until

The long

made

New

York, Boston, Philadelphia and San

obsolete by the gasoline-powered launch.

overall length of commercial boats varied

from 18.5

much

preferred

as

22

feet.

Whitehalls

were

feet to as

by

the

shanghaiing community: they could be rowed or sailed by one or

two men; they were

fast,

could bear a load and were quite rugged.

235

Bibliography

Newspapers and Periodicals Coast Seamen 's Journal

California Police Gazette

Sea Breezes

San Francisco Morning Call

South of Market Journal Portland (Me.) Press Herald

New

San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Newsletter San Francisco Examiner

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin

New

York Times

Philadelphia Record

San San San San San

York Clipper

Mateo Gazette Francisco Magazine Francisco Daily Alta California Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin

San Francisco Daily Sun San Francisco The Elevator San Francisco Pacific Appeal

Francisco The California Star

Government Records and Reports Acts Amendatory to the Codes of California, Twenty-First Session, 1875-6 (Sacramento, Ca.: State Printing Office, 1876) Federal Government. Records of the

Work

Projects Administration,

Record Group 69. Ship Registry and Enrollments, 1848-1910, for the Port of San Francisco (Washington, D.C.: 1941) Index To The Laws Of California, 1850-93 (Sacramento, Ca.: State Printing Office, 1894) Legislative Sourcebook:

The California Legislature and

Reapportionment, 1849-1965 (Sacramento, Ca.: Assembly of the State of California, 1965)

236

Bibliography

San Francisco, Great Register of the City and County of San Francisco, 1873 (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1873) San Francisco, Great Register of the City and County of San Francisco,

1867 (San Francisco: Towne and Bacon, 1867)

San Francisco Municipal Reports, 1875-76, 1884-85 San Francisco Subway (Sacramento, Ca. California State Printing :

Office, 1925)

Ship's Articles and

Crew

Lists, 1856,

Record Group 36, Box

16,

Haidee and Kate Hooper U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census data for San Francisco, 1852,

Volume 6 U.S. Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Volume 7. Population. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. City of San Francisco, Ward 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. San Francisco City, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883)

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Twelth Census of the United States, 1900. San Francisco City, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Seventh Census of the United States. 1850. Cumberland County, Maine, Roll 251 (Washington, D.C.:

Government Printing Office) United States Statutes At Large, Vol. Government Printing Office, 1875)

Directories and Reference

Bancroft, Hubert

18, part 3, (Washington,

D.C.:

Books

Howe, History of California,

vol.

VI (San Francisco:

History Co., 1888)

Compiled by D.M. Bishop & Co., San Francisco City Directory, 1876, (San Francisco: B.C. Vandall, 1876) Davis, Winfield J., The History of Political Conventions in California, 1849-1892 (Sacramento, Ca.: California State Library, 1893) 237

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

de T. Abajian, James, compiler, Blacks In Selected Newspapers, Censuses,

And Other

Sources:

An

Index To

Names And

Subjects, Vol.

G.K. Hall & Co., 1977) de Kerchove, Rene, International Maritime Dictionary (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983) de la Pedreja, Rene, A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry Since the Introduction of Steam, 1 (Boston, Massachusetts:

(Westport, Connecticut:

Handy Block-Book, (San Insurance

Map Kemp,

Maps of San

Greenwood

Press, 1994)

Francisco: Hicks-Judd, 1894)

Francisco, California

(New York: Sanborn

and Publishing Co., 1887) Peter (ed.), The Oxford

Companion To Ships And The Sea,

(London: Oxford University Press, 1976) of Officers Composing the Whaling Fleet of San Francisco, Cal. (San Francisco, Ca. James Laflin; issued annually,

Laflin, James, List

:

1886-1906; Laflin, Peter

J.,

1907-08)

Press Reference Library. Notables of the West, International

News

vol. I

(New York:

Service, 1913)

San Francisco City Directories for the mentioned years Simpson, J. A. and Weiner, E.S.C. (eds.), The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) Wolfe, Wellington C, ed., Men of California, 1900-02 (San Francisco:

The

Pacific Art

Company, 1901)

Books Asbury, Herbert, The Barbary Coast Francisco Underworld Bailey,

Hiram

P.,

:

An

Informal History of the San

(New York: Knopf,

Shanghaied Out of 'Frisco

1933) in the '90s

(London:

Heath Crenton, 1938) Barry, Theodore Augustus and Patten, Benjamin

Memories of San Francisco, California

Adam, Men and

in the "Spring

of '50" (San

Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1873)

Beasley, Delilah Leontine, The Negro Trailblazers of California

York: Negro Universities Press, 1919) Brown, Richard Maxwell, Strain of Violence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975)

238

(New

Bibliography

Bullough, William A., The Blind Boss and His City: Christopher

Augustine Buckley

&

Nineteenth Century San Francisco (Berkeley

and Los Angeles, Ca.: University of California Press, 1979) Burns, Walter Noble, A Year With A Whaler (New York: The

MacMillan Company, 1919) Coffman, William Milo, American and Schuster, 1955)

in the

Rough (New York: Simon

Cross, Ira B., (ed.), Frank B. Roney: Irish Rebel and California Labor

Leader (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1931) Dillon, Richard H., Shanghaiing Days (New York, New York:

Coward-McCann, 1961) Hendry, F.C. (Shalimar), From All The Seas (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd., 1933) The History of the Olympic Club, (San Francisco, Ca.: The Art Publishing

Company, 1893)

San Francisco Yacht Club, 1900 San Francisco Yacht Club, 1900) Martin, William Camp, San Francisco: Port of Gold (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1947) Mullen, Kevin J., Let Justice Be Done, (Reno and Las Vegas:

Inkersley, Arthur, Souvenir, (Sausalito, Ca.:

University of Nevada Press, 1989)

Olmsted, Roger R. and Nancy L., San Francisco Waterfront (San Francisco, 1977)

Thomas Crowley, Sr., Kortum and Willa Klug Baum, (Berkeley, Ca.:

Recollections of the San Francisco Waterfront,

interviewed by Karl

University of California Press, 1967)

Rhodes, Frederic Cecil, Pageant History

Of Australasia

,

Of The

Pacific Being The Maritime

2 volumes (Sydney, N.S.W.:

F.J. Thwaites,

1937)

Schimmel, Jerry F., An Old Ship From the Gold Rush (San Francisco: Prepared for the Token and Medal Society Journal, 1992)

Shaw, Frank Hubert, White Sails and Spindrift (New York: Odyssey Press, 1947)

Taylor, William, Seven Years' Street Preaching In San Francisco, California; embracing incidents, triumphant death scenes, etc.

(New York, Carlton

& Porter,

1856)

239

.

.

.

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Tugboats and Boatmen of California: 1906-70, interview of William J. McGillivray by Ruth Teiser (Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1971)

Walsh, James P., The San Francisco

The

Irish,

1850-1976 (San Francisco:

Society, 1978)

Articles

Berg, Annemarie, "Johnny Devine: Alias, the Shanghai Chicken," The California 5,

Highway Patrolman,

v. 38, no. 2, April 1974, pp. 14-5, 34-

38-40

Bielinski, John,

Boat,

"San Francisco's Oldest Rowing Clubs", Wooden

May /June

1981,

Morphy, Edward, "San Francisco Thoroughfares," San Francisco Chronicle O'Brien, Robert, "Riptides," San Francisco Chronicle

"San Bruno prize

fight,

119 rounds," La Peninsula,

v. 5, no.2,

May

1949, p.8

Transcripts of Oral History Interviews

Captain Alexander McKenzie ms. by Jack McNairn,

J.

Porter

Shaw

Library

Shaw Library Captain Alfred C. Hansen ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Captain Edward Connors ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Captain John E. Johnson ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Captain F. N. Lyons ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Hans Hansen ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Johann Carlson ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Max DeVeer ms., J. Porter Shaw Library George W. Kimble ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Thomas Crowley ms., J. Porter Shaw Library DuVal Williams ms., J. Porter Shaw Library Captain James Allen ms.,

J.

Porter

Manuscript of crews of whaling vessels, 1906-08, 1909-12, 1913-28, J.

Porter

Shaw Library (San

Francisco: Peter

240

J.

Laflin)

Bibliography

Miscellaneous Sr., Thomas, Scrapbooks The Laflin Record. A Record of Men and Ofiicers Shipped by the Whaling and Sealing Fleets from San Francisco, Ca., and Recipients

Crowley,

of Sailors' Advances, 1886-1890 "San Francisco City Licenses 1850-1856," microfilm Roll No. 2-86 United States Criminal Court Case No. 1210, California District

"Whitehall Boatman" pamphlet

file, J.

241

Porter

Shaw Library

Index Battle Abbey:

Herman

shanghai a

Bay View and Ahlers,

Dick

•

De

Albatross:

216 Veer shanghaied onto

•

•

sailor

193, 194

American takeover from Mexico • 2, 6 An Act to Prohibit Shanghaiing in the United States of 1906 • 207 Anderson, John • 46 • 89 Anderson, William Arago Decision • 181, 199, 210

•

R

•

•

keeper

79, 80

109, 154, 164;

"Shanghai" Kelly's party Habitues

•

•

48; Herbert Asbury 's

•

•

21; Part of First

158;

John Devine

•

•

•

182;

86; Refuse to •

199;

when

186; Stevenson helps

•

191; Supply

repeating voters in primaries

•

191;

Take two months' advance on sailors' wages • 24; Threat to from Labor Exchange • 25

51, 63

Boardinghouses: Coastal located South of Market • 158; Commonality of •

interests

with early merchants

Destroyed by

fire

•

•

6;

44; Early

system chaotic • 6; Higgins saloon located in the midst of • 190; Keep sailors going

148

Washington C.

•

crew needed • 32; Steal sailors from one another • 194; Stevenson declares no advances to be paid to •

Ward

Bark Alaska: First mate disappears when crew shipped outside channels • 44 Bark Little Ohio: Lost in the Arctic 82,84 Barney, General B. Griffin: Deputy Shipping Commissioner • 188 Barr, John "Jack the Ripper" • 145, Bartlett,

states they

Shipping master contacts

57 •

Crowley

adhere to Dingley Act

Tom Chandler and

Bare-Knuckle Boxing

84;

Press ridicules

169; Proximity to deepwater

wharves

•

Board attempts to regulate

murdered on • 82; Men shanghaied on • 107, 109, 113; On Harbor •

173; Callender

•

13;

29, 72, 126, 167; John Ashton

Police beat

in

wanted to be big fellows • 151; George Lewis elected assemblyman • 173; Impact of runners strike on • 88; Large share of advance goes to • 30; Marine

B Barbary Coast

amount paid

black sailors' boardinghouse

92, 93

Bank Exchange Saloon

186; Total

deteriorating

Asbury, Herbert • 29, 72, 126, 166 Ashton, John • 81-82 J. •

•

1872 • 186 Boardinghouse "Repeaters" • 173, 191 Boardinghouse keepers: Alliance

Works • 33, 35 Thomas • 84-85

Austin, Alfred

67

•

144, 191; Stevenson determined

to stop

Arctic Oil

Arnold,

Potrero Railroad

Shandon* 115 Blood-money • 92, 190, 192, 207; British captains refuse to pay • 188, 187; Cheaper to let crew desert and pay • 144; Menzies investigates problem • 203; Payments to runners • 88; Promised by Sailor's Home • 202; Reverse blood-money

109 onto

92, 93

•

Bells of

9,

Amazon: Attempt to shanghai a

attempts to

man onto

by extending

credit

•

185; Location of boardinghouses in •

24

1850s

242

•

18, 74;

Most operated by

Index

immigrants

•

New competition

18;

South of Market

or deepwater houses represent

Budd, James Herbert

194; North End,

•

•

•

5;

•

boardinghouses and shipowners

•

Callao, Peru

208

•

132

15,

Callender, John T.: 93; Actively

Bohemian Club

76

•

involved in black churches and

Booker, William Lane Booth, Newton

Boston House

Owen

boardinghouse keeper

»

5

Purchases stolen coal •

132

Camp, William Martin 33

Cane, Billy

Brown, Harry "Horseshoe"

Commits

suicide

•

99, 127;

•

43, 83;

Dead

worked for

Partner in sealer A nnie

•

11

Brown, Henry "Shanghai" • 90, 149; Boardinghouse on Davis Street • Chandler as his runner

Dead

at

•

Casey, Joe

138; Next to clothiers

Son arrested

•

•

•

As

Apprentice under Fritz and Fallon 170; Apprentice under Higgins

•

•

Greggains his bodyguard

department uniform

•

•

167 169;

•

170;

28, 51, 52, 53, 56, 62;

•

shipping master

144, 184;

•

At

169; Enters politics to protect

Friend of Menzies In politics

•

Referees bout

•

T

Young

•

•

183;

148, 169, 204;

•

170; Obituary

•

172;

Corruption in municipal contracts •

•

•

190; Buckley aligned with crimps

167; Flees United States

167-68

•

boardinghouse interests

50;

75; Chandler aligned with

•

Democratic convention • 167; Attacked by John Devine • 65; Democratic County Committeeman

murdered • 80; Testifies against reverse blood-money • 192 Brunsen, Martin • 216 •

125

95

•

As a boxer

49;

95; Son-in-law

Buckley, Christopher A.

216;

Aligned with Mannix/Brady

200; Son of

"Shanghai" Brown

• 6,

•

85

Chamber of Commerce • 24 Chandler, Thomas • 51, 74, 100,

28;

42; In Whitehall boat

•

•

•

Casey, Henry

time of Springburn

shanghaiing race

•

85;

84;

214 Cardoza, John • 216 Carlson, Johann • 106, 110 Casey, Edward Warren • 169, 193 Captain Jack

104;

•

Makes

95, 120

•

Cane, Johnny

at •

time of Springburn shanghaiing 43; Nelson

•

Trouble with boarders

"British Bill"- 65 •

8;

Signature in Laflin record

102

British grain fleet

84; •

Gomez •

death treats against

Braverman, Charles •

•

Boardinghouse in 1867

170

•

96; Black sailors'

•

politics

12

•

Bray, John K.

144, 199

•

70

•

Brannan, Samuel

fire

15

Shipping

masters market maker between

18;

Calico Jim

173; Runners

129; Shanghai early San

•

Francisco residents

Brady,

77, 78

•

158

Burns, Peter

•

•

•

62;

50; Rescues de

54; Residence next to John

Sullivan

•

171; "Shanghai"

Brown's runner • 18; Shoots self in hand • 58; Speaks to Boarding House Masters' Association • 42

173; 72; In

171;

Why Buckley aligned with crimps

•

Chandler,

173; Worked serving Pisco Punch

•

Chicago Hotel

79

243

Thomas W. •

•

94, 103

172, 175

SHANGHAIED

•

New team

190;

Republican boss

•

Murder

Clark, Billy

Survives shipwreck

169

•

176, 194;

David, R.L. 199;

•

boardinghouse

Foe of Curtin

39;

•

196; Support

•

Desmond, Jack

Maguire

for

DeVeer,

199

•

Coleman, William Colter, John • 67

T.

•

100

•

and County of San Francisco

wage

rate

•

•

Whitehall boatman

Dave Meiggs Wharf* Sr.,

Kamp

•

R

•

Kamp

•

dies

•

60, 61;

•

•

62;

58; Shoots

•

12 •

197

sailor's

•

9,

•

•

•

21, 80, 144

Duarte,

advance

Mary

Dwyer, Billy

• •

•

50, 67

95 45, 53, 63

182;

12

129, 148; At

124; In Whitehall

159; Rescues

Step-father of Tom

Eliza: Surgeon shanghaied onto

•

135;

•

•

216

Explosion, Curtin's boardinghouse

•

39

145

Thomas • 133; Accuses CSU of Curtin bombing • 200; Debunks trapdoor myth • 129;

Crowley,

Sr.,

Employees clothiers buift for

• •

•

•

FaUon, Matt

112; Friend of

140, 142; In 1898

•

170 •

206; Fjerem, John

216

124;

First •

•

Ferem, Johnny

95; Gasoline launches

Retrieves Rogers' body Stories

•

67

Douglass, William Y.

139, 148; Partner of

Peter Burns

hand

•117,118 Douglass, James

88;

On Marine Board

•

67; Loses his

69, 70;

Dingley Act of 1884

As Police Chief Boat named for • 139;

boat race

55; Executed

•

August

136, 138

•

May have received

Crowley,

•

Boardinghouse runner

Shooting of Chandler

173, 176

•

Crowley, Patrick

10;

133, 146, 159

Dolphin Swiniming and Boating Club

Crimps' Regatta 20, 22;

51, 64;

Dillon, Richard

Cowlitz: Captain undercuts

•

182

•

138, 144

•

39 Crimmins, Phil

•

108

•

Shanghaied "Shanghai" Kelly

See Smuggling

•

Max

20, 34, 59-70; Bare-knuckle boxer

6

•

Consolidation Act of 1856 for the City

Cosgrove, Patsy

57

Devine, John "Shanghai Chicken"

Coffinan, Bill '113-16

Connors, Edward

•

de Young, Michael H. • 54, 57 Democratic Party • 169-78

39; Knights of Labor withdraw

•

221;

38

•

197

•

de Young, Charles

Denies bombing Curtin's

Contraband

•

197, 200

•

Bring charges against crimps

Congress

88;

•

9

8,

Coast Seamen's Union

•

boardinghouse

at

139, 155, 180

•

Classen, Adolph

support

39, 40, 99, 200;

•

Signature in Laflin Record

169; State •

39, 41; Explosion at

•

boardinghouse

191;

•

Republican party secretary •

Curtin, John

opposes Stevenson

Power base

Clark's Point

SAN FRANCISCO

•

Chute, Richard: Graft prosecution 173;

IN

78;

Ward

•

191

Leroy D. • 216 Fogle, George • 197, 213, 214 Fletcher,

53, 58, 158, 169

244

•

Index

Franklin, Joseph "Frenchy"

•

Nymphia Hounds • Hotel

138;

Aids Henry Casey's escape

167;

•

173; Arrested

•

Buckley's dogcatcher

•

•

21;

76;

96; Dies in early

Business failures

•

50s

Assemblyman

77; Elected

•

113, 117, 118

Houses of prostitution • 168 Hoyt, Henry C. • 139 Humboldt House • 122 Hunt, Fred J. • 87, 144

Appointed to Democratic State

Committee

•

•

172; Elected president of I

Boardinghouse Masters' Association

42; Location of

•

boardinghouse

•

8,

Illegal Boarding: Arrest for

20; Republican

County Committee member

•

169,

•

Al

J. •

185

95

•

170, 178

Fulton House Furuseth,

38, 39

•

Andrew

Jessen, Frank

104, 195, 197,

•

200

Jobet,

Henry

34

• •

82,

Johnson, John E.

84 103

•

Jordan, Billy: Boxing referee 77;

Garvey, Carl

•

46

Gately, John

•

18, 95, 139,

Gately, William

Gibson, Robert

176

154, 176

•

Comments

at

56, 58,

Chandler's death

62;

128

•

Graham, Richard

•

1, 2, 5,

9, 10,

33

K Kamp, August

18

Kane, John

Greggains, Alex: Buckley's bodyguard

•

66-67

•

197, 200

Kehrlein,Emil»117, 119,

•171

Kehrlein, Valentine

John D.

•

Overview of his career • 78; Saloon owner • 149; Signature in Laflin Record • 216 •

Gold Rush of 1848-9 • Gomes, Anna • 29, 216 Gomes, Luis • 95

Griffin,

•

202

Friedman, Stan Fritz,

21, 43;

22; Prohibited under Act of 1872

172, 183; Testifies against Sailor's

Home

•

Arrests for under Chief Crowley

•

178

•

117, 118

Kelly, James "Shanghai"

Birthday party story

H

•

•

65;

13;

Disappearance and death

•

15;

Inspiration for later shanghaiing

Hansen, Alfred C. Harris,

Dooney

Harris, Joe

•

•

•

99

stories

51, 52, 73

126;

215

•

42;

Myth of trapdoors

William • 213 Hart, John • 20, 43 Hawkins, Timmie • 148, 149, 208 Hayes, Joseph • 80, 151 Herman, Warren P. • 92-95 Higgins, William T. • 57, 172, 173, 190; Tries to kill Michael de Young • 54

•

Nickname used by

contemporaries

Harris,

at

•

27; Reputation

•

• 12; Shanghaied by John Devine • advance sailor's 62; Signed for • 10; Typical immigrant business

17

173-74

Kelly, Martin

Kimble, George W. Klee, Henry

•

Ship Saloon,

245

•

111-12

94, 95; Proprietor,

1907-14

Old

SHANGHAIED

Klondike Gold Rush Kremke, John • 215

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

31, 33, 200

•

boarding

194; Whitehall

bill •

boatmen, smuggling and Levy, Louis

•

jobs for sailors

from Laflin

La

Follette

Act of 1915

•

Want

95, 208, 210,

•

135

Admits finding 197; Payments

95, 213; •

49, 197, 214, 217;

•

214

211 Labor Exchange • 24, 132 Laflin, James • 10; As shipping master • 10; Bartender at Old Ship Saloon • 9, 14; Death • 217; Early crimp •

Lewis, Edwin C.

•

53;

state

Changes

173; Delegate to

•

political parties

Republican convention

•

172;

Devine invades his boardinghouse

Entry in Whitehall boat race

•

59; Location of boardinghouse

138; Friend of John T. Sullivan

•

Republican County Committee

9;

178; His sloop used to aid

Casey's escape

Record

•

49, 84, 197, 213, 216;

Nickname "Jimmy the Drummer" 10; Partner in sealer Annie

•

Partner of Pinner

•

Levy

•

whaling crews E.

Donovan

43;

lost

Lick House

54,

•

•

•

92, 139

Maitland, Billy

•

20, 94; Cuts off John

10; Sloop Marry

Devine' s hand

•

60, 61; Location of

•

11; Whitehall

boardinghouse

•

20;

R.

•

Mason

20, 80, 87

11

Maynard, Harry 50 McAlpine, Thomas "Soapy"

McCann, James: Arrested • •

21; Killed

boardinghouse

in

64

by John

•

34; •

Numerous

34; Threatens

retaliation againsy ship's

20;

McFay, John • 84 McKenzie, Alexander

Maguire Act of 1895 • 199; Marine Board of 1870 • 182; Shipping Commissioner Act of 1872 • 186; State law of 1889, illegal not to pay

•

for illegal

37; Location of

violent activites •

•

•

197; First

California to prevent desertion

•

22

S.F. to prevent

law

58

Master Mariners' Regatta

Dingley Act of 1884 4; First

Thomas

& Company shipping agents

boarding

•

•

Mannix, Jack • 170 Marine Board • 182-83, 192

McLean

•

104

•

95

American

91, 145

•

17, 19

•

Tommy

Alta calls for enforcement of* 47;

desertion

57

Comer

M

Law: 1864 law to control runners 24; Boarding House Association formed in response to 1864 law • 39; Congress amends 1872 Act • 192; Crimps evade • 182; Daily

in

216 216

11; Shipping

•

42, 79-81

Thomas

20;

Payments

•

law

•

•

173, 180,

Chandler's partner

W.

Langford, John

95, 180,

Lyons,

9

•

Lane, Walter Langford,

•

Lewis, Harry

Lyons, F.N.

10; Signed for

•

advance

boatman

43;

Payments

18;

•

•

•

•

169, 183

Lewis, George

Lindblom, Eric O.

49; Sails in Master

Mariners' Regatta

sailor's

•

•

"Lime-Juice"

217; Payments to

•

Horseshoe Brown to

•

11;

Partner of Brown and Nelson

made by

member

Henry

168; Laflin

•

•

ads to recruit greenhands

•

mate

•

47

99

McMahon, Peter • 197 Meiggs Wharf • 68 Menzies, Stewart

246

•

139, 169, 203,

204

Index

Mordaunt, Al

•

200 216

worked

42, 48, 176,

Mordaunt, Edward

•

Morphy, Edward

13

Mrs. Chiragino

•

•

89,

branch

at

Herman

Olympic Club

•

Warren

12;

P.

94

•

at

157

•

95

Mrs. Edgar* 29, 216, 217 Mrs. Mrs.

Gomes • 216 Muheim • 95

P.G

Munroe, John • 197, 200 Murray, Elizabeth • 18, 216 Murray, Thomas • Boardinghouse destroyed by fire

•

Sabatie

Parker, John

44;

•

29, 78

Paupitz, William

•

18,

People's Party Peterson,

Chained to mast In Laflin Record • 95, 216; In

Peterson,

•

21;

Whitehall boat race

•

•

78

18

•

Pioneer Rowing Club Pisco Punch

•

N

Piatt's Hall

Popper,

76

173, 176

•

Portsmouth Square

Naunton, George: Shipping master

•

Price,

159-62

•

56

•

Max

168

•

80

79,

Plaisted, Frederick A.

•

84

22, 191

•

Pinner. Robert

18, 49,

213

Napthaly, Benjamin F.

82,

Andrew • 95, 138, 200 Henry • 156, 157, 162 Pickled Chinaman • 158

44;

138, 139;

•

Location of boardinghouse

•

15

•

Paupitz, Dorothy

Boardinghouse near Harbor Police Station

& Company

John C.

•

70

2, 69,

48

•

189 Nelson, Nils "Shanghai": First hand

account of* 103;

Number of

payments from Laflin • 217; Partner of Laflin and Shanghai Brown • 43; Proprietor, Chicago Hotel

•

94; Sailor's

Home

Rainey,

Sam

170, 173, 175, 176

•

Republican County Committee Franklin on

steals

•

169

•

Republican Party: Chute's role in

two boarders of* 194; Shot while

winning primaries

•

raiding seal rookeries

and Lewis protect

interests as

•

11, 43;

Signature in Laflin Record

Nichol,

Duncan

•

•

216

members of*

79-81

boss

Nikko

• 29, 126 North Beach • 168

•

183; Higgins, party

190

Republican Party

Lewis

state convention:

a delegate to

Richardson. William Rix, Hale

190; Franklin

•

•

A

172 •

2

76, 193

Robert J. Tobin: Whitehall boat O'Brien. Jack

•

named

95

Ocean House • 46 Old Ship Saloon: Building still exists • 94; Changes in address • 26; Dick Ahlers at • 216; Henry Klee at • 94; In 1907 9;

•

14; Laflin as bartender

"Shanghai" Kelly

for

•

139

Roeben, George Rogers, John

Roney, Frank

•

9, 10, 18, 42,

197

20. 76. 201

•

•

38

Runners: Arrest for

illegal

boarding

•

21, 48; Artist conception of • 31;

•

may have

Beat

man to force him

Dave Crowley,

247

Sr., for

to ship

•

34;

meat market

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

Devine for Johnny Devine "Shanghai" Kelly's • 65; How they worked a ship • 150; John Fjerem, for •

•

on ship to stop shanghaiing Kelly's

•

advance

•

15;

solo job as

•

197;

sailor refuses to ship out

after receiving

•

50;

James Ryan

44; Role in

attempts to shanghai to get

•

5;

"Shanghai"

Laflin Record documents

213;

Two

Share of sailors'

46;

24, 30 San Francisco Board of Supervisors 168, 206 San Francisco Consolidation Act of 1856 • 20 San Francisco Fire Department and

Sr.'s first

•

extension of Sailor's

•

months' wages to

boardinghouse keeper

46; Supervisor objects to

•

due

67; Discount

unfamiliar persons

Drunken

148 Ryan, James: Charged with aggravated assault

197; Devine tried

•

•

•

Thomas Crowley,

216;

bill for

30; Signed Laflin Record

•

Kamp's

to get

63;

Home • 206; Police stay

Sailor's

•

for finding jobs

129, 145;

Walker

Home lease •

206

Politics

•

•

•

170, 175

R "Scab Johnny"

Savory, John

•

111,

117, 200

Abel F. • 186, 192 Seamen's Boarding House Masters' Scott,

Home

Sailor's rent

•

•

90, 203; $1 per year

194; Boarder beaten

tried to leave calls a

150

men •

superintendent

runner for

1863

•

•

7; Police

Poor quarters

•

202;

named for

206; Puts

216; Sailor's

subsidized by city

•

in

•

against

•

in

Sailors'

by

• 1,

4,

year

•

•

129;

Name

183; Signatures in sailors

•

Shaw, Frank H.

•

ShickeU, Jack

111, 117-22

•

•

2

138-39

16

See Old Ship

Saloon: Ship Arkansas converted to

Ship Blackwall: Burned

210; Congress

crew

outlaws payment to boardinghouse keepers

•

Record • 218; Supply Gold Rush San Francisco

Ship Arkansas

21

advance wages: Approximate

total paid per

Method for

50;

Shanghaiers' boat race

200; Testimony

205

Sailors: desertion

•

Laflin

•

Ten boardinghouses align with 206; Termed the largest crimp •

•

their arrival

194;

joint in the world

90; John T. Sullivan's

on shipping articles in 1855-6 • 10; Ship out crew within 24 hours of

194, 203;

"Shanghai" Nelson's boarders

•

among

transporting victims

Home

207; Steals two of

•

1902

support

Sailors offered drinks to attend

chapel

136, 139

•

Shanghaiers: Control available sailors

164; Representatives sign Laflin •

48; Officers

Senator James G. Fair. Whitehall boat

downward pressure on wages • 203; Reduces deepwater wage rate • Record

•

•183

view in

comment

190; John C.

•

pay members of* 187; Try to stop non-members from shipping crews

86, 88; Laflin a

•

27,

of* 169; Ships' captains refuse to

206; Founded in

10; Partial

March

41; Chute and Casey

Price, vice-president

86, 202; Jack F. Stewart •

•

installed as officers

207; Capacity

•

203; Former chaplain

testifies against

1856

1865

201; British Consul

•

crimp joint •

Association: Chartered

when he

185; Denial of charging

248

•

24

in port

by

Index

Ship Reefer. Legend "Shanghai" Kelly

shanghaied crew onto Ship Yankee Blade

•

15;

Swannack, Daniel: Denounced by Coast Seamen's Union • 202;

13

•

Myth

Resigns as superintendent of

"Shanghai" Kelly rescued

shipwrecked passengers Shipping Act of 1872 Shipping agents

Home

13

men

money paid by

•

Taylor, Reverend William

186; James Laflin

•

San Francisco City maker role • 30; Mentioned in Boarding House Masters' constitution • 41; Menzies' friend Chandler hired as 203; Scott and Babcock • 7; Section of Act of 1872 directed against • 185; Share of sailor's advance • 24, 30; Thomas W. Chandler as • 172; Warren P. Herman as • 94

Tobin, Robert

Sloop MaryE. Donovan Smith, Henry

Smuggling

•

Trapdoor

126; Market

•

Turner,

St.

•

Staples, Staples,

•

•

•

Stutz, C.C.

•

Sullivan, John T.

1928

Career

•

149

•

185-88, 190

•

:

1906-

fleet,

95

Laflin ships

86, 88

•

22

sailed

100; Difficult conditions

•

crew on 32, 214

•

•

10;

on

•

100;

Men

Whitehall boat: Boarder steals

161

Appointed to •

in

173;

168; Bankrupcy

•

•

56;

shanghaiing • 3; Origin • 125; Reported sixty miles outside

72;

50; Supervisor, First

• 76; Chandler capsizes Harbor police try to stop

Franklin's

state

Attends wedding of Laflin' daughter

•

•

Whaling Vessels: Connors

Democratic committee •

51

Whaling: List of men in

146

•

6,

lured onto

Sullivan, John L.

185

Whaler Jeanette • 107, 110 Whaler Narwhal ' 111-12

214

Stevenson, Jonathan D. Stewart, Jack F.

•

Warner, Abe: Cobweb Palace • 134 Waterman, Robert "Bully" • 6, 26

168

95

49,

24

w

Marvin M. • 1 Melvin • 206

Gussie

•

Vlautin, Paul

Steamer Goliah: "Shanghai" Kelly throws birthday bash on • 13 Stein,

•

139-43

34, 36

Dominic's Church

Stabens, Morris

•

Vigilance Committee

38, 173, 191

McCann

125-27, 129

V

6

•

2

U.S. Shipping Commissioner

Vigilantees

South of Market

•

168

u

Southern Cross: lessen shanghaied onto by

216

•

167-68

•

•

J. •

Matthew

Twigg, John

128, 135, 150

•

•

75, 89, 104

10; Listed in

Directories

201;

•

30

•

Shipping Masters: Estimated blood-

•

201; Sailor's

superintendent

Signature in Laflin Record

182, 185

•

Home •

25

•

Shipping Articles Shipping dead

•

Sailor's

Golden Gate

Ward

145; Rescue by

•

Dave Crowley,

•204

shanghaiing

249

•

Sr. •

135; Role in

100, 132; Trapdoor

SHANGHAIED

IN

SAN FRANCISCO

myth • 126-27; Under sail • 137; Used in smuggling • 135; Used to transport newspapers to

Oakland

in city's

•

on

Whitehall boatmen: Allows five

2;

John

•

T. Sullivan, friend •

Wright,

157;

•

5,

•

tries to

•

Bowne & Company

of* 168;

Yankee Sullivan

250

escape

42, 138

202

•

130; Role

129; Role

151

67, 68

179;

Foil shanghaiing attempt in 1853

Paid to retrieve corpses

•

Winn, A.M. •

5,

Wilson, Harry "Shanghai"

sailors to escape • 133;

Competitive techniques

•

Wilson G. Hunt: Devine

154

Elected to state assembly

commerce

in shanghaiing

•

51

•

84

Also by

Bill

Pickelhaupt

Club Rowing on San Francisco Bay, 1869-1939 The

story of the old rowing clubs of the

Bay— their early

competitions and later role in bringing to reality Daniel

Burnham's

an Aquatic Park for the people of San Francisco.

vision of

"Pickelhaupt

is

masterful in chronicling the various

races these clubs would launch against each other

A particularly beautiful echoes

Thomas Eakins'

photograph

.

.

.

.

eerily

painterly masterpiece Kevin Starr

author Americans and the California Dream

"A

.

.

.

.

.

."

series

helluva great book on old-time San Francisco,"

Tom

Cahill

former San Francisco Police Chief Paperback. 100 pages. 32 photographs. ISBN 0-9647312-0-7 $12.95 plus $2.25 shipping. California residents add $1.10 sales tax

Send check or money order

to:

Flyblister Press

1706 Irving Street

San Francisco, California 94122

Cover design:

Bill Pickelhaupt,

Text design:

Bill

Copy

Malcolm

E. Barker, Larry

Van Dyke

Pickelhaupt and Malcolm E. Barker editor: Lucille

Matthews

Garamond and Titanic Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers, Michigan on 60 lb. Finch Opaque Typefaces:

continued from front flap

t*yCrimp/politicians such as "Frenchy" Franklin, Tommy Chandler, a former bare-knuckle boxing champion, Edwin C Lewis and others worked under Chris "Blind Boss" Buckley, William T. Higgins and Republican waterfront political boss Dick Chute to protect the collective interests of the shanghaiing commu-

Joseph

ASSVO/V ST:

HOWARO

nity.

First hand accounts of those shanghaied blend with a tale of crime, political intrigue and disregard for basic human rights to give us a picture of an era in San Francisco's history

SI

that

many

just as

soon

in that city

would

forget.

C/.3.

7'RAA/SRORT

Se frv/cze:

The Author

rOISOM ST HARRISON pi

Pickelhaupt was born and educated in Michigan. Mr. Pickelhaupt has developed a strong interest in the history of San Francisco's waterfront. An earlier book, Club Rowing on San Francisco Bay, chronicled the role of the city's old rowing clubs in the conflict between Bill

E. /=?

development and recreational use of the city's waterfront. He works in San Francisco's Financial District and is an oarsman with the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club.

A r

Shanghaied in San Francisco

Pickelhaupt has recovered and fashioned into a compelling narrative the primary materials— the accurate, colorful, and frequently painful story— of waterfront life in the leading Pacific port of the turn-of-the century era." —Kevin Starr, author of the Americans and the California Dream series. "In

Bill

"A unique look at a little known topic .... Mr. Pickelhaupt sheds light on a very dark side of San Francisco's past." —Albert Shumate, M.D., President Emeritus, California Historical Society "Bill

Pickelhaupt's

book breathes new

life

into a topic that has for the E. Barker, author,

most part been shrouded in mythology." —Malcolm San Francisco Memoirs, 1835-1851

SEAMEN SHIPPED, PROTESTS KOTKD AID EITBKDED,

PROTECTIONS GRANTED, Aad

ill

attar

HOTiJLUL BCHNXSS 10

toauted

With dllifMM, bf

(BOSH &

fflEiUdHOj

BAH PBAHCISOO.

The true story of shanghaiing— kidnapping men for a voyage to sea, after they were slipped drugged liquor— and the politicians who let it happen in San Francisco for over sixty years. In several first hand accounts, victims of the practice tell how they fell to the wiles of San Francisco's crimps. Over seventy photographs and line-drawings, some published for the first time, illustrate the people and places where shanghaiing happened. The century old mystery of James "Shanghai" Kelly's death is solved along the way.