Talk:Shanghaiing

French
In French, the verb "shangaïer" has been in use for a long time to refer precisely to what this article describes. I don't know its origin. I've also heard, rarely, the verb "enshangaïer". The prefix "en" is added to indicate the idea of "bringing in" (such as is "enroll", "involve", "entice", etc...). The spelling "changailler" (totally frenchized based on phonetics) was reported to me by a colleague, but I have never seen it myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.92.4 (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems a bit unlikely
At first glance, it seems a bit unlikely that ships would shanghai someone who was not already a sailor -- even without salary, a landman would not likely be worth the food he'd eat on the voyage, and would get in everyone's way. How credible are the sources? David 03:53, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Very credible. It did happen, & with a change in only a few laws it could happen again. And I say this not just because my grandfather was shanghaied to Alaska as a teenager. But if you don't want to believe this is true, nothing I can write will convince you. -- llywrch 22:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Any idiot (excuse the term) can stow cargo and swab the deck. Obviously it'd be useful to have free labour able to do jobs like these. Joffeloff 18:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The ledger book of James Laflin, a San Francisco shanghaier for over 50 years, indicates so-called "green horns," or men without experience on the sea, were frequently shanghaied. His ledger book for the years 1886-1890, a time when Laflin was a shipping master for San Francisco's whailng and sealing fleet, has been posted on Mystic Seaport Museum's website, and is available for online inspection. --Billpick 15:44, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Circularity?
"Any friendless man in port cities ... was in danger of being "shanghaied", hence the English slang term." Is this a different slang term not documented here, or is it a circular reference? Also, the two links for Jim "Shanghai" Kelly of San Francisco and Joseph "Bunco" Kelly of Portland actually go to the same page (for Jim Kelly). Should someone remove the second link? (my editing skills are still in infancy) Adonai-aus- (talk) 10:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, "being shanghaied" is also generic American slang nowadays for any sort of trick. The usage is obvviously derived from this practice.  I'll try to make it clearer.--Pharos 21:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Word Origin Incorrect
"The word "shanghai" comes from the city of Shanghai, in China. This terminology originated because Shanghai was a common destination of the ships likely to use shanghaied labor, and because Shanghai (being distant) was an unfortunate destination to be shanghaied for."

This statement does not have any supporting evidence, and is incorrectly founded. There are 4 main accents in Mandarin Chinese, and while a word may have the same spelling, the accent completely changes the meaning of the word.

Shang(4th accent) Hai (3rd accent) means "on", and "sea", and is the name of the city, Shanghai, China.

Shang (1st accent) Hai (4th accent) means "to harm" in Chinese. They are completely different words.

Regardless, the word "shanghai" does not come from the city name. It comes from the term "going to sea" or the word "to harm" in Chinese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.65.14.142 (talk • contribs) 20:38, 28 September 2006


 * Actually, I've come across two etmologies of this verb, only one of which has anything remotely to do with the city:
 * It was taken from the nickname of one of the more notorious crimps, "Shanghai" Kelly of either San Francisco or Portland (both had a gentleman of that last name who made his living providing shiphands).
 * According to Samuel Dickson, Tales of San Francisco (Stanford: University Press, 1957), pp. 386f:
 * One of the longest voyages San Francisco bottoms were called upon to make was from the Golden Gate to Shanghai. There was no direct passage; passengers bound for Shanghai had to travel around the world. In the natural course of events, any ship destined to make an unnaturally long voyage was said to be embarking on a Shanghai voyage. And when it became necessary to find sailors to man the ships by foul means, the conscripted sailor was, in the popular idiom of the day, "sent to Shanghai".
 * Does anyone still use the phrase "slow boat to China"? I suspect it means the same thing as this word originally had. So the Chinese port was associated with this nefarous practice only as part of a figure of speech. -- llywrch 16:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Here's one explanation from The Straight Dope. Cheers.   H aus  Talk   23:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Clipper ships involved in the US West coast to China trade (and associated with stories of "Shanghaied" deck hands) were actually considered relatively fast boats.
 * I found 9 references supporting the city-name theory and 0 supporting the theory mentioned above. I have no opinion on what the actual truth is, only what is readily verifiable.  So, IAW WP:VERIFY I commented out the alternate theory in the article.  If we can find even a shaky source for it, I'm all for putting it back in.  Cheers.   H aus  Talk   00:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Not quite a B yet
I moved it back down to "start-class," but expect to move it back up to B. There are some questionable claims, some pretty big omissions, and the language frequently takes a long walk off a short pier. Thanks for the assessment, though. Cheers. H aus  Talk  23:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm. One problem is that this topic is almost entirely covered by popular writers like Stewart Holbrook who had a tendency to never let facts get in the way of a good story. Obviously various labor unions would have the necessary collections and sources to flesh this out with verified facts -- but there was an awful lot of unwarranted romance associated with this practice due to (1) it happened to "someone else"; or (2) those who survived it had a tendency to look back on the experience as just one of those adventures of young adulthood. -- llywrch 16:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Iceland: contradiction
"Shanghaiing was normal practice in Iceland during the 1950s and 60s as there was a lack of personnel for the nations fishing fleet, due to a large influx of Faroese fishermen able to work for less"

I thought it works the other way: influx of cheaper foreign labor causes unemployment among locals, not "lack of personnel". Perhaps they meant lack of Icelanders willing to work for Faroese wages, but it's quite a different story. ?? 78.107.117.194 (talk) 12:39, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Merging Shanghaiing with Blackbirding
It seems to me that the Shanghaiing and Blackbirding articles are describing the same practice, as carried out in two separate parts of the world. Personally, I don't think this is enough justification for two separate articles on the exact same subject, so I propose that the articles be merged. Since Shanghaiing and Blackbirding are essentially regional names, I also suggest that the merged article be given a more neutral name to reflect the more global view that would result, and keep Shanghaiing and Blackbirding as redirects. TheRealTeln (talk) 01:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it would make more sense to rename the "Blackbirding" article to something that describes its content more precisely, such as "Slave raiding in Oceania". The "Blackbirding" article is specifically concerned with slave raiding in that geographical area. Jarble (talk) 14:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * They are both long, well referenced articles and "shanghiing" applies specifically to capturing sailors, not land-based labor. I'll untag the two. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:55, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Origin
"A theory of the word's origin is that it comes from the Chinese city of Shanghai" Gee, you think? Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 22:31, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

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Current days and Thailand fishing slavery
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/mar/30/thailand-failing-to-stamp-out-murder-slavery-fishing-industry-starvation-forced-labour-trafficking

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International coverage / article renaming
This article begins

"Shanghaiing or crimping is the practice of kidnapping people to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence."

Crimp (recruitment) also redirects here. However, this article appears to almost exclusively cover the history of Shanghaiing in America. This is a problem, because crimping as a term is not exclusively linked to the American topic. Crimp as a term was in use in England in the 18th century (see e.g. London Life in the Eighteenth Century, M. Dorothy George ISBN 0897331478). It seems to me that we should have a generic article for Shanghaiing / crimping, and that this article should be retitled to reflect its American topic, much as we have the article Impressment to deal with the topic in the context of the Royal Navy, which itself also doesn't mention the term crimp. —  Scott  •  talk  12:26, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

The widespread adoption of steam-powered vessels in the world's merchant marine services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries radically altered the economics of seafaring. Without acres of canvas to be furled and unfurled, the demand for unskilled labor greatly diminished (and, by extension, crimping). The sinking of the RMS Titanic, foll

I THINK UNSKILLED SHOULD BE SKILLED 173.76.45.94 (talk) 15:48, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Image
The main image, a ransom note related to the kidnapping and murder of Adolph Coors III, has very little to do with shanghaiing. Coors was not kidnapped or forced to be a sailor. Ack4747 (talk) 17:04, 10 June 2024 (UTC)