In One Ear: Shanghai encounter
A tidbit from The Daily Morning Astorian, April 18, 1885, mentioned that three men were in custody for soliciting “seamen for a lodging house where rooms are let for hire” at James Turk’s sailor hostelry in Astoria, which was on Commercial Street between 15th and 16th streets.
According to Travel Astoria, Turk, a notorious shanghaier, covered the ports of Astoria and Portland with his sons. Ships often needed crews, and men were regularly drugged and kidnapped, winding up at sea after being sold to a ship’s master. So did those who were taken in on credit in the Turks’ boarding houses, who couldn’t pay when their credit ran out.
A Portland Waterfront blog features Frank Thomas Bullen’s book, “The Cruise of the Cachalot.” Bullen met Turk when the shanghaier boarded a ship and tried to convince Bullen and his companions to stay at his boarding house.
When Bullen refused and made a smart remark, “swift as thought, the wild-beast stood revealed — man-stealer, murderer, criminal of loathliest shape ... This particular devil burst forth into a flood of flaming blasphemies against us all, and myself in particular, lurid language ... “ Fortunately, a large man in the group stepped forward and challenged Turk, who then “wearily turned away.”
“ ... Afterwards,” Bullen recalled, “we heard that this particular specimen of the Pacific Coast boarding master had a reputation for evildoing second to none in all that foul fraternity.”
