Thurston County men shanghaied?

Ira Wesley Kitmacher

From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, in the era of large sailing ships, unscrupulous saloon and boardinghouse owners and others shanghaied unsuspecting and vulnerable men, taking them prisoner and selling them to ship captains who needed to fill out their crews.  

While there are no records of shanghaiing happening in Olympia (the water level was too low for large ships until the early 20th-century dredging), there is little doubt men from Thurston County became victims after traveling out of town.

Because Olympia sits at the southernmost point of the Puget Sound shipping highway, local loggers and laborers frequently took steamboats north to larger, deeper ports like Tacoma or Seattle. Once there, they were easily targeted by waterfront kidnappers. A drugged drink or a blow to the head could cause a local man to vanish overnight, waking up days later trapped on a forced voyage across the ocean. 

The practice was inexplicably allowed due to legal loopholes, lax enforcement, and maritime laws that heavily favored ship captains and owners over sailors’ rights until the 1915 La Follette–Furuseth Seamen’s Act was passed by the U.S. Congress (in the face of World War I).  

It was called shanghaiing, as many of the ships receiving the kidnapped sailors were headed to Shanghai and elsewhere in Asia. Also, kidnapping locations were often close to old Chinatowns, near the waterfront, and home to saloons, brothels, and boarding houses catering to sailors. Another word for this was "crimping," which is thought to refer to either the British term for pressing sailors (such as during the Revolutionary War) unwillingly into service aboard ships or the Dutch word for live fish kept in a tank of water.  

Unsuspecting young men were sometimes dropped unconscious through trapdoors (deadfalls) in the floor and taken through Seattle’s and other towns’ underground tunnels (some dispute the prevalence of these uses of tunnels). These men were sold as laborers by crimps acting as middlemen for fifty dollars a head (about $1,650 today) and forced to serve on ships as sailors in need of crews. There was no escape. There are many paranormal tales of these tunnels being haunted, and ghost tours are held in them.  

The most infamous shanghaier was Bunko Kelly. He was a British hotelier who, by his own account, crimped some two thousand men and women in the Pacific Northwest over a 15-year period, beginning in 1879. He earned his nickname “Bunko” in 1887 after delivering a crimped “cripple” to the captain of the British ship Jupiter. He was also called the “Kidnapping King of Portland” and the “Coyote of Portland.” The Jupiter’s captain complained that Kelly’s action was “bunk,” or ridiculous. As shanghaiing wasn’t illegal at the time, Kelly was never arrested for it.

However, he was arrested and convicted of murder in 1895 for the killing of G.W. Sayres, an opium smuggler who was hacked to death and thrown into Oregon’s Willamette River. Kelly was sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary, built in 1851, the state’s oldest prison. He was pardoned by the governor in 1908, based on a petition filed by some of the same people who had worked to have him incarcerated.  

Kelly’s most infamous crimping, and what may have been a legend, reportedly took place in 1893. He was looking for 17 men to kidnap and deliver to the captain of the Flying Prince, which was headed to Shanghai. He passed a Portland funeral home and heard multiple men groaning. Kelly found 22 seemingly drunken men in the cellar surrounding a keg from which they had been drinking. He had his men load the 22 men into carts, then (via the underground tunnels) to canoes, and finally delivered them to the ship’s captain. The captain paid Kelly, only to later discover 22 dead sailors in the ship’s hold. They had been drinking deadly embalming fluid (it was a funeral home), not alcohol. The captain had to secure 17 additional sailors when he reached Astoria. No investigation was ever conducted.  

Shanghaiing declined in the early 2oth century for several reasons. These included the 1884 Dingley Act (addressing abuses against American merchant mariners related to wages and other reasons), the 1885 Maguire Act (ending the practice of imprisoning deserting sailors), and the 1915 Seamen’s Act. That final law was nicknamed the “Magna Carta of American sailors’ rights” and was passed to protect sailors, restrict crimping, and promote a stronger, safer U.S. Merchant Marine.

The transition from sailing ships, which required a large, unskilled labor force, to steam-powered vessels that needed trained crews also reduced the need for crimps to find able-bodied men. Finally, the formation of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific (SUP) in 1885 helped protect sailors and advocate for better conditions, thereby curbing the crimping trade.  

Interestingly, kidnapping was not a federal crime until June 22, 1932, when the Federal Kidnapping Act (Lindbergh Law) was enacted following the infamous kidnapping and death of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s toddler son. The law made kidnapping a federal crime when it involved crossing state or national borders, utilizing the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.  

Ira Wesley Kitmacher is an Olympia-based historian and author, writing twelve published and upcoming history and folklore books, many on the Pacific Northwest (including Haunted Puget Sound, Pacific Northwest Legends and Lore, and October 2026’s Dark Tales of Oregon and Washington Territories), one on World War 2, and two on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. His books are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. He is a speaker at many public venues.  Ira leads tours of Olympia based on his books. He is featured on television, radio, and other media. Ira is a Commissioner on the on Thurston County Historic Commission. He is a professor who has taught graduate courses at Georgetown University and other colleges. Ira is a retired senior federal executive and attorney (California, Inactive).