Portland's Lost Waterfront

The full-rigged ship, Riversdale Back in the palmy days of the Portland sailor’s boarding masters the occasional landlubber that was shipped was small fry compared to the steady trade in deserting seamen. The following article is from the April 1903 edition of the British ship owner’s trade magazine, The Syren and Shipping News . The events mentioned in the article on the Riversdale marked the beginning of the end for the Portland shanghaiers. Within three years the mighty Sullivan, Grant Bros.& McCarron would “throw down their hands in sheer disgust” as reformers got the upper hand in Portland politics. On Watch T’ is gratifying to find an Englishman, in this degenerate age, having the pluck to pit himself against the combination of sailors' boarding-house proprietors, their runners and the whole evil fraternity that have long made Portland, Oregon, a place to be avoided by shipmasters, officers and men under the British Red Ensign. Captain Porter, of the...