When 19th-century gangs called 'crimps' kidnapped men to work on board ships, what city was their most frequent destination?
"James Kelly (crimper) James Kelly, better known as ""Shanghai"" Kelly, was an American crimp of the 19th century who kidnapped men and forced them to work on ships. The terms ""crimping"" and ""shanghaiing"" are used to describe this type of work. Kelly wore a red beard and had a fiery temper to match. A legendary figure in San Francisco history, Kelly was known for his gift of supplying or shanghaiing men to understaffed ships. Kelly kept a boarding house in San Francisco, variously reported to be on Pacific or Broadway. He also ran a number of bars including the Boston"
"Shanghaiing Shanghaiing or crimping is 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. Crimps flourished in port cities like London and Liverpool in England and in San Francisco in California, Portland and Astoria in Oregon, and Seattle and Port Townsend in Washington, United States. On the West Coast of the United States, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco for shanghaiing. On the East Coast of"
"to do something by means of fraud."" Shanghaiing Shanghaiing or crimping is 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. Crimps flourished in port cities like London and Liverpool in England and in San Francisco in California, Portland and Astoria in Oregon, and Seattle and Port Townsend in Washington, United States. On the West Coast of the United States, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco"
"entitled ""Thirteen Years In The Oregon Penitentiary"", about the conditions there. He was identified as an inmate of the Oregon State Penitentiary in the 1900 Federal Census. His entry in the census record indicates he was born in Connecticut, not the United Kingdom. After his book was published, he left on a trip to California and never returned. Joseph Kelly (crimper) Joseph ""Bunko"" Kelly was a Liverpudlian hotelier of the 19th century who kidnapped men and sold them to work on ships. The terms ""Shanghaiing"" and ""crimping"" are used to describe this type of activity. By his own account, he"
"Joseph Kelly (crimper) Joseph ""Bunko"" Kelly was a Liverpudlian hotelier of the 19th century who kidnapped men and sold them to work on ships. The terms ""Shanghaiing"" and ""crimping"" are used to describe this type of activity. By his own account, he Shanghaied about 2,000 men and women during his 15-year career, beginning in 1879. Kelly, later called ""The King of the Crimps"", received his ""Bunko"" nickname in 1885 by providing a crewman that turned out to be a cigar store Indian. Kelly made $50 on the deal. In one infamous deal in 1893, he delivered 22 men who had"
"by 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 Sr. pushed through the Seamen's Act of 1915 that made crimping a federal crime, and finally put an end to it. 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"
"by crimps and other 'friends' of seafarers: ""crimps essentially took control of seafarers' wages and provided them with lodging and entertainment, like an agent."" Crimps were also frequently agents for, or owners of, boarding-houses, and they might also have a connection with public houses, brothels, places of entertainment, and places to eat. An extreme version of crimping was shanghaiing, when seamen ""would be rendered senseless – either by drink, drugs or blunt instrument – and then were signed-on to a ship"". Folksinger and author Stan Hugill published, in 1967, a book on this topic, ""Sailortown"", but his account has been"
"the United States, New York easily led the way, 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"
"ransom). In the past, and presently in some parts of the world (such as southern Sudan), kidnapping is a common means used to obtain slaves and money through ransom. In less recent times, kidnapping in the form of shanghaiing (or ""pressganging"") men was used to supply merchant ships in the 19th century with sailors, whom the law considered unfree labour. Kidnapping on the high seas in connection with piracy has been increasing. It was reported that 661 crewmembers were taken hostage and 12 kidnapped in the first 9 months of 2009. Criminal gangs are estimated to make up to $500"
"Crips The Crips are a gang based in the coastal regions of southern California. They were founded in Los Angeles, California in 1969 mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams. Once a single alliance between two autonomous gangs, they are now a loosely connected network of individual ""sets"", often engaged in open warfare with one another. Its members traditionally wear blue clothing, a practice that has waned somewhat due to police crackdowns specifically targeting gang members. Historically, members have been primarily of African-American heritage. The Crips are one of the largest and most violent associations of street gangs in the"
"Swamp Angels The Swamp Angels were a New York City, waterfront, street gang, during the mid-nineteenth century. One of the most successful waterfront gangs of the mid-late 19th century, the ""Swamp Angels"" dominated the dockyards, of New York Harbor, from the 1850s into the post-Civil War era. The headquarters of the gang, was a rookery, known as ""Gotham Court"", on Cherry Street, in Lower Manhattan, which gave them access to the sewers, under Cherry Street, which allowed the gang to easily raid the East River dockyards and sell off its valuable cargo, within hours, before the thefts were discovered, the"
"pay was called ""blood money,"" and was just one of the revenue streams available. 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. In some situations, the boarding master could receive the first two, three, or four months of wages of a man he shipped"
"England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Of that population approximately one-quarter were linked to British port cities like Bristol, Liverpool, and Plymouth. Approximately one-quarter of the populations were associated with men of the West Indies and North America. The others ""came from other parts of the world such as Holland, France, Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and several parts of Africa."" Piracy ""became one of the most common male occupations"" for Africans and African-Americans in the early 19th century. Black sailors filled about one-fifth of the population at various sea havens. Becoming a pirate offered a choice of other occupations for African-Americans"
"illegal practices as kidnapping and forced detention. Many recruited to be shipped off the Caribbean, were falsely advised on where they were heading. Names of places would be altered, to fit a higher meaning. For example, recruiters told migrants heading to Dutch Suriname they were heading to Sri-Ram instead of Suriname, taking into account Ram in the Hindu religion means ""a religious place where good triumphs evil"". With a need for labor, after the slave emancipation within British territory in 1834, the recruited Indian immigrants set sail for Guiana and other British West Indian territories. Upon arrival, the newly transplanted"
"works. Only the most difficult convicts (mostly re-offenders) were sent to the Tasman Peninsula prison known as Port Arthur. Female convicts were assigned as servants in free settler households or sent to a female factory (women's workhouse prison). There were five female factories in Van Diemen's Land. Convicts completing their sentences or earning their ticket-of-leave often promptly left Van Diemen's Land. Many settled in the new free colony of Victoria, to the dismay of the free settlers in towns such as Melbourne. On 6 August 1829, the brig ""Cyprus"", a government-owned vessel used to transport goods, people, and convicts, set"
"the New York waterfront, where they returned to street crime. They eventually dissolved by the end of the decade. Charlton Street Gang The Charlton Street Gang was a New York City street gang and river pirates during the mid-nineteenth century. The Charlton Street Gang were one of the earliest river pirate gangs. They raided small cargo ships in the North River of New York Harbor during the post-Civil War period of the 1860s. After a time the ocean liners and major shipping vessels around the Manhattan west side dockyards became so well protected that the gang moved upriver. In 1869,"
"would sometimes capture the crew of a stranded ship for ransom, and eat them if they resisted. Whippy would try to rescue them but sometimes found only roasted bones. Ultimately he became American Consul to Fiji, and left many descendants among the islands. There had always been a small number of castaways in the South Pacific since the earliest Spanish explorers, but the numbers increased dramatically in the early 19th century as the pre-requisite for a beachcombing in the Pacific was the era of whaling which began about 1819. It is estimated that 75% of beachcombers were sailors, particularly whalemen,"
"— whiskey laced with a dollop of opium — and shanghaied on two-year long voyages. Skippers paid crimps up to $75 a head to supply able-bodied hands to crew their vessels"". It was not until the 1860s when sailors gave the district its name, and began to refer to it as the ""Barbary Coast"". The term ""Barbary Coast"" is borrowed from the Barbary Coast of North Africa. That African region was also notorious for the same kind of predatory dives which would target sailors, as had been done on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Miners, sailors, and others hungry for female"
"some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore, Ireland were abandoned following the raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates. While Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured, their primary goal was to capture people for sale as slaves or for ransom. Those who had family or friends who might ransom them were held captive, but not obliged to work; the most famous of these was the author Miguel de Cervantes, who was held for almost five years. Others were sold into various types of servitude."
"to narrated story, gangs of wreckers operated on the coast of Cornwall during early 19th century. Cornwall has been very aptly described as the ""haven of smugglers"" in view of its topographic features of ""rocky coves, sheltered bays, tumultuous waves and wild and untenanted landscapes"". The wreckers ensnared ships to this coast line by tricking them with use of beacon lights, which they purposefully installed on the shores of the coast. Once the ships foundered on the rocky coast they were looted by the wreckers. By 1847, Francis Rodd of Trebartha Hall, who had been High Sheriff of Cornwall in"
"towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Ireland, and as far away as Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture European slaves for the Arab slave market in North Africa. Since the 1600s, the Barbary pirates had attacked British shipping along the North Coast of Africa, holding captives for ransom or enslaving them. Ransoms were generally raised by families and local church groups. The British became familiar with captivity narratives written by Barbary pirates' prisoners and slaves. During the American Revolutionary War, the pirates attacked American ships."
"Slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as ""Guineamen"" because their trade involved trafficking to and from the Guinea coast in West Africa. In the early 1600s, more than a century after the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, demand for unpaid labor to work plantations made slave-trading a profitable business. The peak time of slave ships to the Atlantic passage was between the 18th and early-19th centuries, when large plantations developed in the southern colonies of North America. To ensure profitability, the owners of the"
"along seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore, Ireland were abandoned following the raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates. While Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured, their primary goal was to capture non-Muslim people for sale as slaves or for ransom. Those who had family or friends who might ransom them were held captive, the most famous of these was the author"
"were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy. From bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured. From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as"
"on stormy nights, the inhabitants lured passing sailing ships onto the rugged Atlantic coast were commonplace in the nineteenth century. The cargoes plundered were regarded as legitimate reward for the hardships endured in this isolated and barren part of the country. Therefore, when looking for a suitable theme for her third opera, it is little wonder that Smyth's thoughts should turn to this dramatic, yet romantic subject. It was after a taking a walking tour in Cornwall in 1886 that the idea came to her and, for several years, Smyth visited places where shipwrecks were said to have been engineered"
"seafarers, adventurers, fishermen and traders for a few decades before the first permanent English settlement of New England at Plymouth. When the Pilgrims established their outpost, they were greeted in English by Samoset, originally an Abenaki of coastal Maine, and Tisquantum ('Squanto'), a local Wôpanâak, but both of their home villages were also wiped out by an epidemic caused by infectious agents unknown in the New World. Tisquantum was abducted by an English vessel, sold into slavery in Spain, mysteriously found his way to London where gained employment on English explorations of the North American coast and later escaped and"
"towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and as far away as Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of Iberia, the terms ""Barbary pirates"" and ""Barbary corsairs"" are normally applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased. In that period"
"and crime. Eighteenth-century London was populated by a large number of migrants seeking job opportunities. Being alone and unaware of city dangers, they could easily become pray of unscrupulous people. Young girls, for instance, could be led into prostitution by manipulative individuals approaching them at their arrival. Procurers could take the advantage of “the custom of mistresses to meet the wagons which brought country girls to London in order to find and engage servants”. According to M. Dorothy George, “the first scene in Hogarth’s ""Harlot’s Progress"" was one frequently played in real life”. Andrew Moreton reflects also upon the contemporary"
"colonies; and from France and Denmark. They transported slaves mostly to British markets in the Caribbean and the American South. Bunce Island was an important British commercial outpost and an attractive target during times of war. French naval forces attacked the castle four times (1695, 1704, 1779, and 1794), damaging or destroying it each time. The attack of 1779 took place during the American Revolutionary War when the rebel Continental Army's French allies took advantage of the conflict to attack British assets outside North America. Pirates, including Bartholomew Roberts or ""Black Bart"", the most notorious pirate of the 18th century,"
"hundreds of passengers. Large, ocean-going junks played a key role in Asian trade until the 19th century. One of these junks, ""Keying"", sailed from China around the Cape of Good Hope to the United States and England between 1846 and 1848. Many junks were fitted out with carronades and other weapons for naval or piratical uses. These vessels were typically called ""war junks"" or ""armed junks"" by Western navies which began entering the region more frequently in the 18th century. The British, Americans and French fought several naval battles with war junks in the 19th century, during the First Opium"
"cargo each; an inevitable result of the extending reach of the British Empire. Of course, because of its size and grandeur, the Port was a place of work for many laborers in late 19th and early 20th century London. While most of the dockers were casual laborers, there were skilled workers in the stevedores who skillfully loaded ships and the lightermen who unloaded cargo from moored boats via barges. While these specific dockhands found regular work, the average dockhand lived day to day, hoping he would be hired whenever a ship came in. Many times these workers would actually bribe"
"escaped slaves to freedom, generally in Canada but also in Mexico where slavery had been abolished. Free African-Americans were often kidnapped from the northern free states along the border of the slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri because of their relative closeness to the South but kidnapping was also prevalent in states further north such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois as well as in some of the Southern states such as Tennessee. Free blacks in New York City and Philadelphia were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping. In New York, a gang known as 'the black-birders' regularly waylaid men,"
"pointed slave owners to the location of their escaped slaves to catch the bounty on the slave's head. The kidnappers were recorded to have acted against their own family members in addition to other members of their community. Their careers also tended to be long, due to African-Americans, particularly children, being more inclined to trust them than white people. Successful kidnappings mainly relied on the blackbirders developing a connection to their target by using their shared racial and cultural identities. New York City and Philadelphia were particularly prominent places for these kidnappers to work, causing fear of being kidnapped by"