Shanghaiing

The verb "shanghai" joined the lexicon with "crimping" and "sailor thieves" in the 1850s, possibly because Shanghai was a common destination of the ships with abducted crews. The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud or coercion". ==Background==

Crimps flourished in port cities like London and Liverpool in England and in San Francisco, Portland, Astoria, Seattle, Savannah, and Port Townsend in the United States. On the West Coast of the United States, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco for shanghaiing. On the East Coast of the United States, New York had the most incidents, followed by Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The role of crimps and the spread of the practice of shanghaiing resulted from a combination of laws, economic conditions, and the shortage of experienced sailors in England and on the American West Coast in the mid-19th century. First, once an American sailor signed on board a vessel for a voyage, it was illegal for him to leave the ship before the voyage's end. The penalty was imprisonment, the result of federal legislation enacted in 1790 (this factor was mitigated by the Maguire Act of 1895 and the White Act of 1898, and finally abolished by the Seamen's Act of 1915). Second, the practice was driven by a shortage of labor, particularly of skilled labor on ships on the West Coast. With crews abandoning ships en masse because of the California Gold Rush, a healthy body on board the ship was a boon. Finally, shanghaiing was made possible by the existence of boarding masters, whose job was to find crews for ships. Boarding masters were paid "by the body", and thus had a strong incentive to place as many seamen on ships as possible. These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship. The most straightforward method for a crimp to shanghai a sailor was to render him unconscious, forge his signature on the ship's articles, and pick up his "blood money". This approach was widely used, but there were more profitable methods. The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade. Some examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunko" Kelly of Portland. ==Ending the practice==

(left) and Senator La Follette (center) were the architects of the Seamen's Act of 1915. With muckraker Lincoln Steffens, circa 1915.Demand for manpower to keep ships sailing to Alaska and the Klondike kept crimping a real danger into the early 20th century, but the practice was finally ended by a series of legislative reforms that spanned almost 50 years. Before 1865, maritime labor laws primarily enforced stricter discipline on board ships. However, after 1865, this began to change. In 1868, New York State started cracking down on sailors' boardinghouses. They declined in number from 169 in 1863 to 90 in 1872. In 1872, Congress passed the Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 to combat crimps. It also limited the making of seamen's allotments to only close relatives. However, the crimps fought back. In 1886, a loophole to the Dingley Act was created, allowing boardinghouse keepers to receive seamen's allotments. The widespread adoption of steam-powered vessels in the world's merchant marine services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries radically altered the economics of seafaring. Without acres of canvas to be furled and unfurled, the demand for unskilled labor greatly diminished (and, by extension, crimping). The sinking of the RMS Titanic, followed by the onset of World War I (which made the high seas a much more dangerous place due to the threat of submarine attack), provided the final impetus to stamp out the practice. In 1915, Andrew Furuseth and Senator Robert M. La Follette pushed through the Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime, and finally put an end to it. ==Notable crimps==

• Maxwell Levy, Port Townsend's Crimper King • James "Shanghai" Kelly of San Francisco • Tom Codd the Shanghai Prince of New Bedford, Mass. • James Turk of Portland • Billy Gohl, known as "the Ghoul of Grays Harbor", of Aberdeen, Washington (also a known serial killer) • Tommy Moore of Buenos Aires ==See also==