The title to the first chapter of my book, The Oregon Shanghaiers, is: “Can Any
Good Thing Come From San Francisco.” Some readers may have found this either
somewhat insulting, or confusing, so I hope this post will help provide a
background for my use of this phrase.
Some 120 years before the famously overrated “Summer of Love”
the city of San Francisco became the center of the universe—a magnet for every
fortune seeker, bunko man, moocher, shop lifter, panel worker, prostitute, gallows
bird, or any other cove or trollop too proud or degraded to be employed in a
respectable manner. As I mentioned in an earlier article a large number of
these undesirables came from Australia by the boatload, settling in tents and ramshackle
lodgings near the waterfront. This part of the city was called “Sydney Town,”
and the inhabitants were labeled, “Sydney Ducks." Very few of these new
citizens took up a pan, or a pick and shovel to seek their fortune in the
Californian wilderness. It was far easier to take the gold away from those sod
hoppers and sourdoughs who brought it down from the hills.
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| San Francisco 1851, Library of Congress: DAG no. 1331 |
The new citizens from the Antipodes took quite well to the
idea of democracy. When their ambitions
were thwarted by judges and sheriffs
they found ways to stuff ballot boxes and threaten voters to achieve the
results they wished. For a short while they blossomed like a perfumed garden
(or a stinking corpse—depending on one’s view) before being put down by the
Committee of Vigilance formed for that purpose. This committee, with righteous
zeal, performed (for the good of
society) lynchings and executions by firearms until the proper sorts of
individuals once more held the reigns of government. Even then the city was a
teeming Babylon of iniquity. One of the evils introduced to the Pacific Coast
from this metropolis was the art of “shipping sailors,” the more extreme
versions being called “shanghaiing.” This art was mainly practiced by the
proprietors of boardinghouses for sailors who charitably offered room and board
to the penniless Jack Tar. They also worked as a sort of employment agency for sailors,
taking from them nothing less than several month’s pay from their advanced wages
for the trouble.
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| 1866 Library of Congress LC-USZ62-20317 |
In 1869 the news went out that one of the commission merchants
in the little town of Portland, on the Willamette River, had shipped a load of
grain and canned salmon directly to England, instead of using San Francisco as
the point of export, as per usual. Speculation of the future of the new seaport
must have caused some concern to the San Francisco merchants and bankers who
normally handled the exports from the lower Columbia region. This may also be
the reason why the sailor’s boardinghouse master, Jim Turk, and his elephantine
wife, Kate decided to move to the quiet village on the Willamette shortly after
his acquittal on a charge of murder. He had spent from November 1869 until
November 1870 in prison awaiting trial, a long enough period to lose much of
his business to the other gangsters infesting the waterfront.
After one aborted attempt at setting up shop in Portland the
Turks returned in late 1874. Jim Turk set up what he called “The English
Shipping Office” near what is now the Skidmore Fountain. In those days ocean-going
grain vessels were unable to fully load in Portland. This called for “topping
off” the cargoes in Astoria, where the grain was brought by steamboat. This
also meant that the final complement of crew members was arranged for in
Astoria in the offices of Peter Cherry, the British vice consul. Within the
year Turk had set up operations in both ports, making him the father of
shanghaiing in both cities.
Previous posts on this subject:
The Turks of California, Part 1
The Turks of California, Part 2
Previous posts on this subject:
The Turks of California, Part 1
The Turks of California, Part 2
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