Shanghai Daze:

A rogues to riches to rags story of Portland’s seedy seafaring past

By Dale E. Basye

Today, maritime recruitment techniques range from manipulative MTV-style Navy commercials depicting eager young men and women operating state of the art machinery against a hard rock musical backdrop, to humble print ads nestled in the backs of newsweeklies promising thousands of dollars to money-hungry students for spending their summers aboard Alaskan fishing vessels.

While both promise more than they are likely to deliver—c’mon, if I really wanted to “be all that I could be” do you think I’d spend three years of my life on a ship full of men, dressed like a Mr. Salty pretzel, on my knees cleaning toilets with a toothbrush?—be thankful you weren’t a down-on-your luck post-grad bumming around turn-of-the-century Portland when naval recruitment took a much more direct approach.

In the late 19th century, Portland was a far cry from the prim and proper visions of Victorianism that we commonly associate with the era. More a city of thorns than of roses, Portland was a squalling barbary coast brimming with sailors, saloons and scoundrels, financially kept afloat by its booming shipping industry. The Willamette was an agitated grove of masts, bobbing with ships from all over the world helmed by captains anxiously anticipating fresh cargo, hungry for their next exotic port. Yet these massive windjammers required a crew of many; men who would work for months—sometimes years— in the most appalling of conditions. And with a dearth of seamen, labor was in short supply.

Enter “shanghaiing.”

[DROPCAP]

Shanghaiing is the centuries-old practice of procuring sailors against their will through coercion, inducement, trickery and force. While most assume the phrase was named after the Chinese port that was the ultimate destination for most of these seafaring vessels, some veteran seamen claim the term comes from the British shilling, citing a practice where British recruiting agents dressed in civilian clothes would offer shillings to needy looking men for a drink or a “flop.” If a man took the shilling, he was then told that he had enlisted in the queen’s navy, and would immediately be whisked away and put on board a ship.

Shanghaiing flourished principally because of the nature of shipping in the 1890s. After arriving at Portland harbor, most ships would have to wait four or five months before getting another cargo. In stead of paying and feeding their crews, the skippers of these ships would let their unsuspecting charges go overboard and into Portland, then accuse them of desertion and forfeit their pay. Then, when another cargo had been arranged, the skipper would hire a “crimp” to pick up a new crew.

A crimp was a lot like a “sea-pimp,” and these base bounty hunters practically ruled the Waterfronts of Portland and Astoria in the late 1800s. Originally a British slang term for “agent,” crimps would act as maritime middlemen, using any means necessary to deliver warm (at times), usually drunken or unconscious bodies to awaiting sea captains. The resourceful crimp would then receive his “blood money,” usually anywhere from $25 to $50 a head, sometimes going as high as $150, depending on the circumstances.

Crimping took on a variety of nefarious forms. Some crimps would befriend hapless strangers, invite them to one of the Waterfront’s many seedy saloons and slip their dupe a mickey (often a concoction comprised of brandy, gin, whisky and opium). Others would entice crews off of foreign ships with heady tales of hard cash, stiff drinks and wanton women, then go back and sell the unwitting seamen to other ships—sometimes even to the same ships—turning a substantial profit. More enterprising crimps or “landsharks” ran boardinghouses which extended credit to seamen in exchange for shipping them out, the sailors often incurring outlandish imaginary debts that would take them months at sea to pay off, leaving them penniless and primed for the next boardinghouse when they returned to port.

[DROPCAP]

By far the most colorful of these crimping tales invariably involve a squat, steely-eyed Liverpudlian named Joseph “Bunco” Kelly. Perhaps the Da Vinci of crimping, Kelly’s nickname is a testament to his shanghaiing artistry. One late autumn night in 1885, when commissioned by the skipper of a bark to get an A.B. (able-bodied seamen), Kelly scoured Portland’s waterfront but to no avail. As he paused a moment, wracking his mind for options, Kelly eyed a tall, wooden Indian standing outside of Widman’s Cigar Store at First and Glisan. Wrapping up the noble 6 foot, 6 inch tall cedar statue in a tarpaulin, Kelly made his way back to the ship. Claiming the “man” was drunk but would make a tidy hand, the delighted captain gave the imaginative crimper $50. Several days later, the wooden Indian was recovered by Norwegian fisherman and Kelly’s new nickname was born.

Other key moments from Kelly’s conniving canon included the height-challenged hooligan shanghaiing prostitutes and dressing them up as men, as well as defrauding the deep-sea craft the Rosecranna, which had Kelly receiving $465 for a crew he never delivered.

Yet Kelly’s most famous ruse garnered him—and Portland’s waterfront— a rather infamous international reputation. One somber October night in 1892, when combing the streets of Portland for 20 men to flesh out the crew of The Flying Prince, Kelly spied an open sidewalk trap-door on Second Street and Morrison. Upon climbing down a steep ladder, he came across 24 apparently deeply inebriated fellows in a candle-lit cellar, moaning and gasping. The acrid stench of formaldehyde permeating the chamber quickly led Kelly to deduce that these men had mistakenly broken into the basement of what they thought was the Snug Harbor Saloon next door, but was in actuality the cellar of Johnson & Son undertakers.

Never one to miss an opportunity, Kelly hurried out of the cellar (closing the door behind him to avoid pesky fresh air from reviving his besotted booty) to fetch some goons to help him transport his expiring merchandise.

The captain, after relaying that he had “never seen so many dead drunks in his life,” shelled out $50 each for the 14 corpses and 10 severely ill men Kelly had delivered unto him.

The next day, the first mate of the Prince made the ghastly discovery and the ship proceeded to dock and unload its carrion cargo, causing an international uproar that started an international investigation centering on Portland’s crimping practices.

[DROPCAP]

In a series of articles written by author Stewart Holbrook for the Oregonian in the early thirties, Holbrook attempted to trace these hardly halcyon days by interviewing a couple of Portland old-timers who had experienced our city’s rampant shanghaiing subculture first-hand.

One of these men, Edward C. “Spider” Johnson relayed stories of two crimp kings, Jim Turk and Larry Sullivan, who—while not as colorful as “Bunco” Kelly—held considerable power over Portland at the turn-of-the-century.

Jim Turk is credited with two claims to fame: 1) he is generally believed to be the first man to introduce crimping practices to the Oregon Coast in roughly 1870 and 2) he shanghaied his own son for blood money. Turk’s rather eccentric disciplinary measure was apparently a reaction to his son’s carousing, rampant womanizing and heavy drinking. Upon return from his deep-sea sabbatical, the young Turk was said to be “cured of his delinquency” and went on to become a successful businessman.

The elder Turk amassed a small fortune, owning boarding houses and hotels in both Portland and Astoria, and was also a bit of a fop, and could often be seen dressed to the nines, brandishing his gold-headed cane. Yet beneath this dandified facade lurked a quick-tempered pugilist, whose violent demeanor was even noted in a Portland Chamber of Commerce report: “The inhumanity and cruelty of James Turk towards seamen has never been denied by men who knew him.”

Larry Sullivan was an amateur boxer who opened a boardinghouse at the corner of Second and Glisan streets in the 1890s. His frequent boasts of being “king of the city” were not without weight, as despite a lengthy police record, Sullivan and Co. managed to manipulate the law into delaying ships from departing as well as tormenting disagreeable captains and rival crimps.

Described by Johnson as a “big shot,” Sullivan acted as a go-between between city officials and gambling institutions (some of which he owned) as well as acting as “ward boss” for local elections. Sullivan’s political involvement resulted in a spate of stories printed about the time of his death, one headline reading “Destinies of More than One Politician Swayed by Boarding House Man.”

An incident where Sullivan aimed a shotgun at police who came to investigate a polling booth in his boarding house during an election, attests his power in the community. After the polling, while police arrested him, no serious charges were filed against him. Later it was found that an entire crew of a Dutch ship were paid two dollars a piece by Sullivan to cast votes, despite their inability to read or speak English.

Another story had Sullivan setting fire to the feet of a sailor that he had drugged too heavily while attempting to crimp him. Although the case went to the Grand Jury, Sullivan cleared his name by paying $1,000 while the sailor died a short time later from the severity of his burns.

Another man who had an intimate shanghaiing experience with Sullivan was A.E. Clarke.

In Holbrook’s article, Clarke tells of the time that he was wandering down Burnside Street in October of 1891, when a friendly gentleman informed him of a riverboat party that his friend Larry Sullivan was putting on. The spirited soiree, which included women and free-flowing spirits, arrived in Astoria for what was promised to be an hour stay. Clarke was then told to sign a passenger list so that the crew would know when everyone was back on board. Sullivan then took Clarke and others on a “tour” of a massive, deep-sea ship called the T.F. Oakes. At that point, Clarke and Company were manacled at gun-point and shoved in a dark strong-hold. It was seven-years before Clarke saw Portland again. Clarke’s story is a nightmarish tale that makes Mutiny on the Bounty seem like an episode of The Love Boat. In addition to malnutrition, countless abuses and indignities (not to mention really bad coffee), Clarke’s recollections include mad Captain Frost—whose collapsing mental condition resulted in the arbitrary execution of members of his crew—and the death of a tyrannical first-mate named Black Johnson, who “mysteriously disappeared” when, while heaving a jib that had gone slack, the crew simultaneously let go, causing Johnson to be jerked overboard. As he clung onto the rope, screaming, the crew pounded his fingers with an iron bar until he let go.

Despite other bizarre crimping stories including a shanghaied logger who claimed his consumption was cured after six months at sea, the “rehabilitative” practice of being drugged and dragged upon a waiting boat slowly began to peter out in the early part of the twentieth century. While the efforts of labor unions, state and national legislation and public outcry all served to put an end to shanghaiing, the real nail in the crimping coffin was the advent of the steamship. Not only did steamships require less than half the men required to operate a sailing ship, they could carry twice the freight in less time. Only then when this amoral practice was officially decried as unprofitable did it truly die. The last reported shanghaiing is said to have occurred in 1928.

[DROPCAP]

While crimping may have disappeared in a puff of steam, a shanghaiing tribute of sorts resides under the sullied streets of Old Town. Acting on various leads and rumors of secret tunnels that were supposedly used to transport shanghaied sailors to waiting ships, historian Mike Jones excavated a series of underground passage ways in the mid 1970s. Upon exploring these brick-lined caverns, Jones came across various artifacts such as bullets, pill bottles and a man-sized cage. While some, he contends, were used as escape routes for opium dens and gambling establishments, others he felt provided convenient thoroughfares for crimps, especially one section that lead to the river from the old Erickson’s Hotel on Third and Burnside. This clandestine underground system was disrupted by the building of the Burnside Bridge in the late 20s, yet there are still plenty to be found. There are trapdoors in the Harbor Light Rescue Mission on West Burnside that lead to the remains of an underground restaurant (where an advertisement for a “Glass of buttermilk and 2 donuts or snail for 5¢” was found), while at 737 SW Front Avenue there is a wagon-wide tunnel that bevels toward the river.

Jones led Oregonian reporter Phil Stanford through a series of these honeycombed tunnels in April of 1991 in search of a mythical Chinese treasure. While the hunt resulted in the discovery of many opium artifacts from Portland’s old Chinatown—as well as some gripping prose concerning Portland’s seedy past—the two emerged into the light of day dirty and treasureless.

So in the months ahead as the city whips itself into its annual trite ritual of self-congratulatory fervor called The Rose Festival, you can smile knowingly to yourself, content in the knowledge that the real Portland, not some touristy cavalcade of hollow pride, lies in mute testimony beneath your feet.