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Shanghaiing or crimping refers to the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as ''crimps.'' The related term ''press gang'' refers specifically to impressment practices in Great Britain's Royal Navy. ==Background== Crimps flourished in port cities like London, Bristol and Hull in England and in San Francisco in California, Portland and Astoria in Oregon,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Astoria's history along the tracks )〕 and Seattle〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Boy named Henry Short shanghaied from Seattle on December 22, 1901 )〕 and Port Townsend in Washington.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Levy, Maxwell (d. 1931), Port Townsend's Crimper King )〕 On the West Coast, Portland eventually surpassed San Francisco for shanghaiing. On the East Coast, New York easily led the way, followed by Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.〔 〕 The role of crimps and the spread of the practice of shanghaiing resulted from a combination of laws, economic conditions, and the shortage of experienced sailors in England and on the American West Coast in the mid-19th century. First, once a sailor signed on board 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= American Merchant Marine Timeline, 1789 - 2005 )〕 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 because of the California Gold Rush, a healthy body on board the ship was a boon.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= The Lookout of the Labor Movement )〕 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.〔 This pay was called "blood money," and was just one of the revenue streams available. These factors set the stage for the crimp: a boarding master who uses trickery, intimidation, or violence to put a sailor on a ship.〔 〕 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.〔 In some situations, the boarding master could receive the first two, three, or four months of wages of a man he shipped out.〔 Sailors were able to get an advance against their pay for an upcoming voyage to allow them to purchase clothes and equipment, but the advance wasn't paid directly to the sailor because he could simply abscond with the money. Instead, those to whom 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.〔 Some crimps made as much as $9,500 per year in 1890s dollars, equivalent to about $260,000 in 2012 dollars. The crimps were well positioned politically to protect their lucrative trade.〔(【引用サイトリンク】author=Bill Pickelhaupt )〕 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. 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. Some examples included Jim "Shanghai" Kelly and Johnny "Shanghai Chicken" Devine of San Francisco, and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland.〔 Stories of their ruthlessness are innumerable, and some have survived into print. 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.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shanghaiing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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