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The 19th century clipper ships in the China trade required a great deal of labor to operate.

Shanghaiing or crimping refers to the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. The related term press gang refers specifically to impressment practices in Great Britain's Royal Navy.[1]


The shipping articles, or contract between the crew and the ship, from a 1786 voyage to Boston.

Crimps flourished in port cities like London, Bristol and Hull in England and in San Francisco in California, Portland[2] and Astoria in Oregon,[3] and Seattle[4] and Port Townsend in Washington.[5] On the West Coast, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco for shanghaiing. On the East Coast, New York easily led the way, followed by Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.[6]

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 a 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.[7] This factor was weakened by the Maguire Act of 1895 and the White Act of 1898, before finally being eradicated 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.[8][9]

Finally, shanghaiing was made possible by the existence of boarding masters, whose job it 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.[8] This pay was called "blood money," and was just one of the revenue streams available.[10] These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship.[11]



Some crimps made as much as $9,500 per year in 1890s dollars, equivalent to about $260,000 in 2012 dollars.[12]

The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade.[13] The keepers of boardinghouses for sailors supplied men on election day to go from one polling place to another, "voting early and often" for the candidate who would vote in their interest.[citation needed] In San Francisco, men such as Joseph "Frenchy" Franklin and George Lewis, long-time crimps, were elected to the California state legislature, an ideal spot to assure that no legislation was passed that would have a negative impact on their business.[citation needed]

Some examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland.[13] Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some have survived into print.

Another example of romanticized stories involves the "birthday party" Shanghai Kelly threw for himself, in order to attract enough victims to man a notorious sailing ship named the Reefer and two other ships.[13]

Ending the practice[edit]

Andrew Furuseth (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 onboard ships.[14] 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.[15] Then in 1871, Congress passed legislation to revoke license of officers guilty of mistreating seamen.[15]

In 1872, Congress passed the Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 to combat crimps.[15] Under this act, a sailor had to sign on to a ship in the presence of a federal shipping commissioner.[15] The presence of a shipping commissioner was intended to ensure the sailor wasn't "forcibly or unknowingly signed on by a crimp."[15]

In 1884, the Dingley Act came into effect. This law prohibited the practice of seamen taking advances on wages.[16] It also limited the making of seamen's allotments to only close relatives.[16] However, the crimps fought back. In 1886, a loophole to the Dingley Act was created, allowing boardinghouse keepers to receive seamen's allotments.[16]

In 1915, Andrew Furuseth and Senator Robert LaFollette pushed through the Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime, and finally put an end to it. This legislation was successful primarily because of the widespread use of steampowered vessels in the world's merchant marine services. Without acres of canvas to be furled and unfurled, the demand for unskilled labor greatly diminished.

The verb "to shanghai"[edit]

The verb "to shanghai" joined the lexicon with "crimping" and "sailor thieves" in the 1850s.[17] A theory of the word's origin is that it comes from the Chinese city of Shanghai, a common destination of the ships with abducted crews.[1][17] The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud."[18]

Notable crimps[edit]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica:Crimp (11th ed.). Britannica. 1911. 
  2. ^ Michael P. Jones. "The Portland Underground: Shanghai Tunnels". Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
  3. ^ "Astoria's history along the tracks". Astoria Riverfront Trolley Association. Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
  4. ^ "Boy named Henry Short shanghaied from Seattle on December 22, 1901". Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
  5. ^ "Levy, Maxwell (d. 1931), Port Townsend's Crimper King". Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
  6. ^ Dillon, Richard H (1961). Shanghaiing Days. New York: Coward-McCann. p. 234. 
  7. ^ "American Merchant Marine Timeline, 1789 - 2005". Barnard's Electronic Archive and Teaching Library. Retrieved 2007-03-29. 
  8. ^ a b c Hope, Ronald (2001). Poor Jack: The Perilous History of the Merchant Seaman. London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 1-86176-161-9. 
  9. ^ "The Lookout of the Labor Movement" (PDF). Sailors Union of the Pacific. Retrieved 2007-04-02. 
  10. ^ a b c Georgia Smith (1988). "About That Blood in the Scuppers". Reclaiming San Francisco: History Politics and Culture, a City Lights Anthology. City Lights. Archived from the original on 2006-10-11. Retrieved 2007-04-03. 
  11. ^ "Sailor Boarding Masters, ETC". San Francisco News Letter (Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco). February 19, 1881. Retrieved March 23, 2010. 
  12. ^ Officer, Lawrence H.; Williamson, Samuel H. (2008). "Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to 2007". Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to 2007. MeasuringWorth.Com. Retrieved 2008-04-20. 
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Bill Pickelhaupt. "Shanghaied in San Francisco". Retrieved 2007-04-02. 
  14. ^ Bauer, 1988:283.
  15. ^ a b c d e Bauer, 1988:284.
  16. ^ a b c Bauer, 1988:285.
  17. ^ a b "Shanghai". Retrieved 2007-04-05. 
  18. ^ For a modern definition of "shanghaied" see wikt:shanghaied.
  19. ^ Halter, Marilyn (1993). Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American Immigrants, 1860-1965. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-06326-8. Retrieved 2008-05-13. 
  20. ^ Williams, James H. (1921). A Tall Water Story of Adventure Aboard a Whaling Ship. 
  21. ^


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