Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century

Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the American Merchant Marine went into a terrible and tragic decline, and sailors were forced to serve under conditions that were little better than serfdom.

Seamen were exploited in wholesale fashion, disfranchised of almost all their civil and human rights, and brutally punished for even minor offenses. Successful skippers had turned into slave drivers, cracking down on the sailors, sometimes even murdering their â€œhands.â€ Though captains were legally prohibited from flogging their crews, they did not hesitate to wield belaying pins, marlin spikes, or their bare fists.

The seamenâ€™s lot became so horrible in this period that entire crews frequently jumped ship when a vessel came into port. One result of this was that new crews had to be kidnaped, crimped, or shanghaied from the unsuspecting populace of the ports.

These â€œimpressedâ€ or â€œhoboâ€ crews were still further conspired against. They often had their wages stolen from them; they were poorly fed and clothed. Their lives became â€œhell afloat and purgatory ashore.â€

In this way what had been our â€œfirst and finest employâ€ in colonial days was turned into a disreputable professionâ€”one that was classed with criminals and prostitutes.

Richard H. Dillon, author of Embarcadero, gives us a frightful picture of the seamenâ€™s lot in this tragic era. He describes in detail daily life aboard those hell-ships which set records in the passage from Frisco to China, but on whose decks fresh blood of the crew was found every day of the voyage.

One of the most infamous of all these vessels was the Challenge whose skipper, Captain Robert H. (â€œMurderinâ€™ Bobâ€ or â€œBullyâ€) Waterman, was eventually put on trial in San Francisco for murder, theft, unjust assault, brutality, and thirteen other crimes against his crew. Dillon offers a complete picture of Waterman and reveals all the details of his famous trial and punishment.

He also provides a series of portraits of other captains who rivaled â€œBullyâ€ in their brutality and sadism, and describes how they in their turn were brought to justice.

Dillon writes of those who attempted to defend seamen when they were most forgotten by the public conscience. Such men as the Reverend Lyman Beecher of Boston; Samuel C. Damon, the seamenâ€™s beloved chaplain at Honolulu; the Frisco street preacher, â€œFatherâ€ William Taylor, andâ€”most outstanding of them allâ€” Andrew Furuseth, the seamenâ€™s â€œEmancipator.â€

In this book Richard Dillon brilliantly recreates the action-packed drama of the American seamanâ€™s escape from serfdom. Readers who enjoyed the authorâ€™s earlier chronicle of true seafaring adventures, Embarcadero, will like Dillonâ€™s second book even more.
Country USA
Manufacturer The Write Thought
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2012-05-29
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	The Write Thought
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2012-05-29
Format	Kindle eBook

Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

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