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Sacramento, California, United States
so salty pieces of coral from surfing Hawaii in the 60's and 70's getting reef pounded living in my body fall through my skin from time to time!

sailing to Oahu

Jimi Hendrix was playing on Oahu. I had never sailed. Surfed Mexico, California, Hawaii! Aw, how hard could it be to sail 90-110 miles from Kauai to Oahu? Piece of cake, right? Remember it was the 60's! This is so bad. We thought we were looking at Kaiena Point,Ohau, knowing we weren't going to make the concert! But at least we were in site of Oahu-wrong! Coy, who had never sailed before, me,who had never sailed before, jeff and Abbott etc. We were looking at the sleeping giant on Kauai! We had done three-sixty's in the night! We sailed on the only tri-marran I've ever sailed on ( except later ) in my life, missed the concert! It was at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheater ( Moon eclipsed . We finally made Nawilwili Harbor! The Skipper tried to give us his boat saying, " It's trying to kill me"! We watched him go stark raving mad not even realising that had we got caught in the channel current we were on our way to Japan! Remember it was the 60's and we were going to see Hendrix. I left out some of the good stuff but I will make up for it later!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Shanghaiied

The shipping articles, or contract between the crew and the ship, from a 1786 voyage to Boston.The role of crimps and the practice of shanghaiing resulted from a combination of laws, economic conditions, and practical considerations that existed on the American west coast in the mid-1800s. Crimps flourished in port cities like San Francisco in California, Portland[2] and Astoria in Oregon,[3] and Seattle[4] and Port Townsend in Washington.[5]



First, once a sailor signed onboard 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.[6] 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 due to the California Gold Rush, a healthy body on board the ship was a boon, and an actual able seaman was worth his weight in gold.[7][8]



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.[7] This pay was called "blood money," and was just one of the revenue streams available.[9] These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship.[citation needed]



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.[9]



In some situations, the boarding master could receive the first two, three, or four months of wages of a man he shipped out.[7] How this was accomplished requires some explanation. Sailors were able to get an advance against their pay for an upcoming voyage. The purpose was to allow them to purchase clothes and equipment. However, the advance wasn't paid directly to the sailor, because he could simply abscond with the money. Instead, those to which money was owed could claim it directly from the ship's captain. An enterprising crimp, already dealing with a seaman, could supplement his income by supplying goods and services to the seaman at an inflated price, and collecting the debt from the sailor's captain.[9]



Some crimps made as much as $9,500 per year in 1890s dollars, equivalent to about $220,000 in 2007 dollars.[10]



The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade.[11] 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]



The most infamous examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland.[11] Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some have survived into print due to their rough humor. One example of such a story involved "Bunco" Kelly passing off a wooden Cigar store Indian as a much-needed crewman to a desperate ship's captain.[1]



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.[11]

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