An advert for Charlie Chaplin’s 1915 movie, “Shanghaied”, which was made in the same year that the subject of its slapstick comedy became illegal.

Highly labour intensive clipper ships used for trade with China made Shanghaiing highly profitable in 19th Century America.

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Many men that were Shanghaied in 19th century America found their next landfall somewhere near the Bund in Shanghai. To find out more about what they got up to upon arrival come on one of our guided French Concession Tours.

To be “Shanghaied” means to be

forced or tricked into enrolling

as a sailor on board a ship, which

was the fate of many men in

coastal Northwestern America

during the 19th century. Since

Shanghai was a common

destination for ships that engaged

in this practice people chose to

use the city’s name to describe

this highly undesirable fate.

Amongst the most infamous of

all Shanghaiers was Jim

“Shanghai” Kelly, who owned a

boarding house in San Francisco that apparently offered unsuspecting customers opium laced cigars that would put them to sleep so that they could

be lowered into small boats hidden beneath trapdoors and taken to nearby conspiring ships. He eventually got his just deserts, however, when he himself was Shanghaied by Johnny “Shanghai Chicken” Devine.

Another legendary Shanghaier was Joseph “Bunko” Kelly, who got his nickname when he managed to trick a ship’s captain into paying US$50 for a Cigar Store Indian carving that he pretended was a sailor. Bunko Shanghaied in bulk like nobody else with two of his most celebrated successes being the delivery of 22 men to a ship after persuading them to drink embalming fluid in a mortuary, and Shanghaiing 50 men in the space of 3 hours.

For Shanghaiers like Bunko

Shanghaiing was an excellent

line of business because it

was not actually made fully

illegal until 1915, and could

be used to generate as much

as US$9,500 per year in the

1890s (the equivalent of more

than US$200,000 in today’s

terms).

1915 was also the year in

which Charlie Chaplin

released his movie “Shanghaied”

which played imaginatively with the idea of kidnapping sailors and brought the word “Shanghaied” into popular use. By this time, however, steam powered boats, which required much less in the way of crew, were leaving the need for Shanghaiers in their wake.