Shanghaiing

Shanghaiing, also called crimping, is the practice of forcibly recruiting people to serve as sailors through trickery, intimidation or violence; those who carried it out were known as crimps. The term entered common use in the 1850s, likely because Shanghai was a frequent destination for ships crewed by men who had been abducted, and the word later broadened to cover any coercion or fraud used to force someone into an unwanted situation. The practice concentrated in port cities including London and Liverpool in England and San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Astoria and Port Townsend on the American West Coast and New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore on the East Coast during the mid to late nineteenth century, driven by a federal law barring sailors from leaving ships mid-voyage, labor shortages caused partly by the California Gold Rush, and a blood money payment system that rewarded boarding masters for supplying crew members by any means available.