The young seaman apprentice stopped for a second at the top of the gangplank of the receiving ship USS Franklin; smiling, he continued down. “Ah, two days of freedom,” he said to himself. Decked out in his Navy blues, Charles Hammond had been granted leave and was hitting the streets of Norfolk, Virginia, in early 1908 with expectations of a good time—but all that would soon evaporate into the night.
Most likely, it was while he was sitting in one of the wharfside grog shops that someone slipped a drug into Hammond’s drink. In a stupor, he was dragged along to a dredging vessel setting out for the oyster grounds of the Chesapeake Bay. His uniform was replaced with ragtag civilian work clothes. Each time the vessel put into a harbor the seaman apprentice was kept belowdecks. For three months, Hammond was unable to mount an escape or call out for help.
Such was the case until one night the oyster vessel set anchor in Baltimore Harbor; it was there Hammond finally made his escape and immediately made for the Norfolk Navy Yard. He was not surprised he had been listed as absent without leave and therefore was considered a deserter subject to a court-martial. He delivered an account of his whereabouts; to those hearing his testimony it seemed fishy at best. Others who went off on an extended, unauthorized leave surely carried a like tale to their superiors upon returning to their ship. But Hammond was very convincing, so much so that the Department of the Navy sent a revenue cutter to apprehend the vessel in question, the Marion, remove the ship’s captain, Marion R. Coleman, and hold him for a federal grand jury. The Navy had seen this scenario before and had little patience, and the 1908 Hammond case prompted them to attempt to put an end to the illegal practice once and for all.
Impressments of U.S. sailors had not ceased with the conclusion of the War of 1812; the phenomenon carried on for decades on both the East and West coasts—not only merchant seamen but U.S. Navy personnel as well. In the first decade of the 20th century, San Francisco was a notorious hotbed of shanghaiing, but East Coast cities likewise had their share of kidnappings—and it wasn’t only seafaring ships from New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia that were guilty of the practice. Oyster dredgers working the waters of the Chesapeake Bay were also involved in the dirty business. The oystermen were not fussy as to whom they kidnapped. Any seaman would do, so inadvertently they would catch enlisted men of the U.S. Navy in their loosely strung web from time to time and force them to work on their ships, usually not drawing much attention from the Navy. But that all changed with the kidnapping of Charles Hammond. Other Navy men had been shanghaied of late as well, and Hammond’s plight was the last straw. The U.S. government would strike back at the press gangs of the oyster dredgers with a “big stick.”
Hammond wasn’t the only bluejacket from the Franklin kidnapped off the streets of Norfolk; five years earlier, in June 1903, Fred McDougal, a landsman in the U.S. Navy, hit the streets of Norfolk looking for a good time. He ran into a man insisting he have a drink with him; McDougal was uneasy with the proposal but acquiesced. The pair entered a saloon on Water Street; there McDougal knocked down two beers. He drew a blank from that point on, until he found himself off the English coast on board the tramp steamer St. Hebert, bound for Rotterdam. From there, the ship went to Hamburg, and then made landfall at South Shields, England. There McDougal was set ashore with a mere $2.25 in wages in his pocket—all the funds he had. Receiving no help from the U.S. Consul, he made his way to London. There he managed to stow away on a cattle ship bound for Baltimore. Discovered four days out, he was placed under arrest. Landing in Baltimore he was handed over to the police who in turn delivered him to the Franklin. He was subsequently court-martialed, found guilty of desertion, and sentenced. After his release, while walking the streets of Norfolk, McDougal came across the man who had shanghaied him, Vance McCarthy. McDougal pointed McCarthy out to the authorities and he was arrested. With this convincing proof of his claim of being shanghaied, McDougal was restored to good standing.
The Oystering Life—Like It or Not
Operating in the shadows so as not to draw attention to their schemes, the press gangs sought out those who appeared to be easy pickings. There was a hot market for laborers, especially during oyster-dredging season. The work was exhausting and tedious, and many men hired through legal means soon quit, if they could—some were held in virtual slavery just like those shanghaied.
Those involved in the shanghai trade were called crimps; they provided crews for the dredgers, no questions asked. The quarry’s race, age, national origin, and state of health didn’t matter. The crimps were paid “per head” for every man tossed into the “run” boat and delivered aboard an oyster dredger. There were even tales of crimps passing off dead men by telling the ship’s captain they were just “dead drunk.”
Not all dredgers dealt in shanghaied crews, but many were involved in the shady practice. In years past when a crimp needed to fill an order to man a crew, he deployed runners to pick up as many men as needed. Wharfside saloons had proved a fertile hunting ground for the runners. Unsuspecting sailors were plied with drug-laced whiskey, rendered too wobbly to walk on their own, and hauled off in the same manner as Seaman Apprentice Hammond had been.
Even with states such as Maryland stepping up with legislation to regulate methods of filling crews, shanghaiing continued. If not forcibly abducted, many a green seaman was fed a line; 17-year-old Charles Patillo was a case in point. Standing on a Philadelphia street on a fall morning he was approached by a man asking, “Know anybody around here who wants a good job?” Young Patillo jumped at the opportunity and was soon aboard a train bound for Baltimore. There he was herded into a covered wagon with at least a dozen other men and delivered to the dock, then transported to a vessel in the harbor—and a life of seafaring servitude.
In 1868 the state of Maryland formed its own so-called Oyster Navy to combat the illegal oyster boats. The fate of seamen was not the Oyster Navy’s major concern. It was mainly tasked with halting the overfishing of the oyster beds and quelling the fighting between competing oyster boats, which practiced open warfare against each other and in time even attacked vessels of the Oyster Navy. The on-running troubles became known as the Oyster Wars. Following Maryland’s example, Virginia created its own oyster patrol fleet as well.
Shanghaiing, whether to fill crews for the Chesapeake oyster dredgers or for seafaring ships, was dealt a serious blow with the Federal Shanghaiing Law enacted in 1906. The prosecutions of a number of errant dredger captains sent a message to others and severely limited the number of oyster dredgers plying their trade, unable to fill their crews by legal means. But this seemed a stop-gap solution at best, as evidenced by the subsequent Hammond case. The problem would continue into the 1910s. In November 1911, Secretary of Commerce Charles Nagel, determined to end the practice of shanghaiing, ordered cutters to apprehend the offenders.
The ‘Deserter’ Scam
But snatching sailors in East Coast cities did not end there; the phenomenon continued, albeit in an entirely different and nefarious way. In 1917 the Hamilton Detective Agency of New York City was charged in kidnapping U.S. Navy enlisted crewmen and holding them until such time had passed that they became classified as deserters. The agency would then deliver the so-called deserters to the Navy for the $50-a-head bounty. S. W. Brewster of the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps charged William Hamilton and Harry A. Reed, principals in the detective agency, along with James Eaton, an employee involved with the scheme, with impersonating federal authorities and unlawful detention and coercion.
The plan was brought to light by Thomas F. Corish, an employee of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He declared that on the morning of 5 August he was standing at the corner of Broadway and 96th Street when he was approached by a man stating he was a detective and that Corish was under arrest for being a deserter. Corish balked, but the man hurriedly handcuffed him to a sailor. The pair was taken to the agency’s office; an American flag decorated one of the office doors, giving it the appearance of a government agency. They were questioned by a “Captain” Reed. A disbelieving Corish would have none of it, and he objected so strenuously that he was released. But the sailor to whom he had been handcuffed, Ray E. Davidson of the battleship Maine (BB-10), was held for nine days at the Hamilton Agency, at times shackled to a radiator. Meanwhile, his status changed from straggler to deserter.
Although it was legal for a bounty collector to round up AWOL sailors, it was illegal to hold them overnight; they were to be handed over to the Navy when they were collected. The Hamilton Detective Agency’s actions obviously ran contrary to these regulations. The discovery of its scheme initiated the case of the People of the State of New York v. William C. Hamilton, with Hamilton being found guilty of coercion (and fortunate not to be found guilty of more serious charges). Davidson testified that “Captain” Reed’s actions had seemed strange but he had thought it best to follow orders.
Oftentimes the agency went to extremes to snag a Navy tar. On one occasion Reed was so brazen as to approach a Mrs. Cotton stating he was attached to the Hamilton Agency. He produced a card that read “Captain Harry A. Reed, Desertion Bureau, 1482 Broadway.” He declared to Mrs. Cotton, “Your son is a deserter. You must tell me where he is. If you don’t we’ll find out anyway and he will be shot.” She assured him her son had an excellent record and was currently on board his ship—with that, Reed left. She never saw him again. Mrs. Cotton came forward when she heard of the arrests at the Hamilton Agency. Elevator operators testified on several occasions that they ferried detained sailors to the agency’s floor. As a result of Hamilton’s “deserter business,” a number of sailors were given terms of two to four years in the Portsmouth Naval Prison on charges of desertion. Ray Davidson was among that number. Surely, more of those serving sentences might have been innocent of the charges.
The Hamilton Detective Agency was not the only concern involved in snagging Navy deserters; many detective agencies approached the U.S. Navy for lists of deserters’ names, but the Navy refused such requests. Some agencies applied for the authority to take over the business of apprehending deserters. Again the Navy refused. Yet the art of snatching seamen off the streets of communities along the East Coast continued, although sporadically, for decades.
Sources:
“The Record Straight,” The Charlotte News, 5 May 1904.
“To End Shanghaiing on the Chesapeake,” The York Daily, 11 November 1911.
“To Stop Shanghaiing,” The Weekly High Point Enterprise, 28 November 1906.
“Men Held as Slaves on the Oyster Boats,” San Francisco Call, 12 February 1906.
“More Sailors Tell of Being Kidnapped,” The New York Times, 30 August 1917.
“Pirates of the Chesapeake,” New York Tribune, 23 November 1888.
“Press Gangs of 1908,” The Oregon Daily Journal, 1 March 1908.
“Richmond Men Missing,” The Washington Post, 9 November 1906.
“Two Weeks as a Shanghaied, The Washington Times, 3 December 1905.
“War on Oyster Dredgers,” The Washington Post, 19 January 1908.
“The People of the State of New York v. William C. Hamilton, May 17, 1917,” trial record, www.casetext.com.
Mark Strecker, Shanghaiing Sailors: A Maritime History of Forced Labor, 1849–1915 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011).