The Savannah morning news., 1903-10-07
NATIONAL INTEREST
CENTERS IN ARRIVAL OF WIT
NESSES IN sHANGHAING CASE.
TO REACH NEW YORK TO-DAY.
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS MAKING
EFFORTS TO STOP EVIL.

kidnapping of Sailors Has Become
Traffic in Seaport Towns.
and Government officials Are
Making Efforts TO Apprehend
the Ones Engaged in H-ShanG-
haiers Are Careful to Cover Their
Tracks and victims seldom Get
Back This Way in Time to Prove
Their stories.
To-day Nose Smallwood. a witness
an the case of the government against
Harry Olsen. is scheduled to arrive in
New York on the White Star Line
steamship Majestic. Joseph Easterltn,
Jesse Hall and John Porter are eX-
pected to arrive in Philadelphia on the
Haverford on Oct Is.
National interest has been aroused
in this case of alleged shanghaiing
The government authorities have ex-
ercised unusual vigilence in apprehend-
ing the guilty parties and securing evil
dence against them. The expenses of
all the witnesses will be borne by the
government UP to the time the case
will come to trial in Savannah before
Judge Speer. In this case against
Olsen the authorities have been more
successful in securing evidence than
usually rewards their efforts.
Shanghaing, as the art OF stealing
men to be forced into involuntary serVl-
tude On shipboard is called, has In these
modern days. been reduced to a science.
Usually no risks are taken. No wit
nesses are found who could or would
swear to the fact. No tracks are left.
Everything is done with twentieth
century up-to-dateness, with silence,
with dispatch. The rude, rough, knock
down process of kidnapping sailors
went out of date with the old wooden
frigate. A man is seen sitting in a
public park. or outside a public house.
A stranger approaches him. They
walk away. The man disappears That
is all. The man who has vanished may
be heard of again in Frisco, Singa-
ore, Marseilles or Cape Town. But
he may not. The men that disappear
generally stay disappeared.
Few people know that in Savannah
for several YeaEs there have lived
men who made it their regular bust
ness to kidnaD men and impress them
into the service of outgoing vessels.
They have worked so quietly and have
SO successfully covered their tracks
that beyond the rumor that certain ne
groes were missing around town, their
presence was unknown. The govern
ment has been making strenuous eff
forts to apprehend those engaged in
this illegal traffic in New York, but
not single arrest has occurred there
within several months, though it is
positively known that a number of
white men, as we'll as negroes, have
been shanghaied.
Shanghaiing is done for deep water
vessels as "a general rule. vessels that
are sailing for far distant ports. The
farther the better, as matter of fact
The last thing that a captain wants
to do is to ship his crew, and it is in
the rush of getting these men on board
that the victims are smuggled aboard,
generally in a stupor from the excess
sive use of whisky, and sometimes
drugs.
Negroes are often picked up around
the water front. who have never
been on the ocean. AS rule
the first place a strange negro does on
arriving at a seaport town is to go
down to the water front, and as he sits
around idle, he is spotted by some agent
of the shipping master. If there is a
vessel in port in need of sailors it is
safe to say that before the night has
passed this negro has either been de-
ceived into going aboard the vessel un-
der some pretext, and kept busy there
until the boat puts to sea. or he is
brought there in a drunken stupor from
which he does not awaken until far out
In most instances captains have fore
sight enough to drop their shanghaiied
sailors at some remote foreign port
where there is little chance of their
getting back to this country right away
and informing the authorities. BY the
time they do get back here all evidence
has been destroyed, and there is Moth
ing TO prove the stories of the man
who said he was shanghaied.