Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

by Richard Dillon

  Thomas Brown, a Swede, followed the deranged Dane to the stand. His short testimony was that he had seen Johnson beaten and the captain dragging him and Corrigan about by the hair. “Johnson seemed a good man when he came aboard,” he said, “but he seemed to lose his senses on the voyage. I saw Brandt beat by the mate in the presence of the captain and also saw Condiff, who went overboard, beat by the mate in the captain’s presence.”

  A Norwegian A.B., Nelson Martinsson, was the unfortunate man who was triced up for five hours after dropping a marlinspike. He was the next witness. He said the mate picked up his shoes and socks from the deck one day and threw them overboard. When he reported this to the captain, the latter spoke to the mate. Later, Harris got him aside, said, “Damn you, I’ll teach you to tell the captain!” and knocked him down. The captain heard the scuffle and asked what was wrong. “Oh, he’s ‘howly,’ sir, that’s all,” answered Harris.

  Ernest Lejude, alias Charles Brant, Charles Brandt, Jean Brand, etc., etc., was an ex-servant who had shipped—as a servant—for Le Havre, or so he thought. He ended up as an A.B., more or less, bound for Frisco on the Sunrise, thanks to New York’s crimps. He was put to work drawing water mostly, when he was not being cuffed about. When defense counsel asked the Frenchman to give the court an example of the powerful language Clarke was said to have used on the crew, Lejude did not say a word but, instead, simply doubled up his fist and with it described a powerful, smashing blow to his cheekbone. That he made his point was evident by the mumble of excited comment in the room.

  But a real wave of sound washed through the room when Maloney, the second mate, was called. A spare thirty-five-year-old, he ambled as he walked because of his old leg wound. He was clean-shaven except for a bristling mustache. He had a bullet head and a bulldog jaw. No sooner had he taken the stand than he told the court that he would not testify if he was compelled to say anything which would prejudice his own case. Judge Lorenzo Sawyer had to promise twice that he would be protected before he would go on.

  Colonel Barnes first asked him, “Mr. Maloney, during the voyage of the Sunrise from New York to this port, how many hours of sleep did the man Peter Johnson, or Dutch Pete, get for rest?”

  “He sometimes got five or six hours, sometimes less—about four.”

  A juror interjected a question—“Four hours in how many hours?”

  Maloney, emphasizing his words, answered, “In the twenty-four hours, sir.”

  Barnes continued with his line of questioning. “Did the captain know that Johnson was limited to those short hours of rest?”

  Maloney, before he answered, took a substantial chaw of tobacco, scratched his head and reminded the court once again he was not about to testify against himself. Then he said, “Yes, the captain knew of it.” Barnes, sensing some important testimony on the tip of the Irishman’s tongue, moved in quickly—“Now, Mr. Maloney, is it not true that you yourself spoke to the captain about the little sleep this man Johnson was receiving?”

  “Yes, when I was the ‘white-headed boy’ with him, the captain, I said, ‘Captain, I believe we are making a damned idiot of that Dutch son of a bitch’. His reply was, ‘Make an idiot of him and let him be God damned!’ That was Captain Clarke’s answer to me.”

  The Alta described this testimony as “Blood curdling.” It so affected the audience that a rumble of shocked resentment resounded in the courtroom. Judge Sawyer, misconstruing somehow the noise as applause, rapped his gavel and boomed, “If this applause is not stopped, we shall have to place the parties indulging in it under arrest.” Colonel Barnes, sotto voce to a reporter, quipped, “If that’s what Sawyer calls ‘applause,’ I should hate to be applauded in that way.”

  The defense called Alfred Gifford, an ordinary seaman of the Sunrise, who was also Clarke’s nephew. Of Brown he said, “He was lousy. He was all eaten up. You couldn’t see it on his face but you could by looking in his hair. He was a Swiss. I knew Edwards. He was drunk as a lord the day after leaving Sandy Hook.” He said Clarke’s “beating” of Corrigan was only with rope yarn and was meant just to scare the boy. And the captain spent his days in his hammock and his nights in his cabin, so he saw little if any cruel treatment of the crew by his mates. Gifford said his uncle had issued an edict to his mates not to beat the men, but “all of the officers, in turn, punished the sailors according to the intensity of their rage.”

  Two more seamen, Morton Van Clief and Charles Burch, and a worker in a ship chandlery, Charles Busch, were character witnesses for Clarke, stressing his kindness and humanity much as Gifford stressed his great Christianity in giving liniment to Corrigan for a sprained hand.

  Andros tried to place Clarke on the stand to testify in his own behalf but both justices agreed that this was not proper. When Colonel Barnes was all set to deliver a brilliant and withering closing plea, Campbell for the defense reminded the court that the plea had to be made by the District Attorney or his aide. Barnes bowed out and Morrow summed up. Campbell followed him with two and a half hours of castigation of the press for “making war” on his client, a humane man who, possibly, was not watchful enough over his mates. (From his hammock?)

  In his charge to the jury, Judge Sawyer reminded them that they were trying Clarke only, not Harris in absentia. But, “if the mate beat and wounded any one of the crew by the direction or the order or the command of the captain, then it was the act of the captain.” He reminded the jury that “a sea captain is endowed by law with extraordinary power—power which would not be recognized anywhere else. But there are also obligations on his part. He is bound to treat the seamen in a proper, humane manner.”

  One hour after retiring, Thomas H. Selby, foreman of the jury and ex-mayor of San Francisco, read the verdict. Clarke was found guilty on seven counts and not guilty on five. The captain heard the verdict like a stoic. He neither blinked an eye nor moved a muscle.

  The day Clarke was convicted, second mate Maloney was placed on trial. He, too, was found guilty but on only one charge, that of beating and wounding Edwards. Clarke’s bail was boosted from $15,000 to $25,000 but he was soon sprung from jail by well-heeled gentlemen like Robert H. (Bully) Waterman and William T. Coleman (The Lion of the Vigilantes) who posted bond for him.

  The crew was released and given lodging in Montgomery’s Temperance Hotel on Second Street. From this arid spot they quickly scurried to blow their $516 witness fees in one grand toot.

  “The monster, Harris of the ship Sunrise, is arrested!” So went the Alta headline of November 6, 1873. The paper had just about given up hope he would be found. One wag on the Alta had suggested that Henry George and his Post cohorts had shanghaied Harris out of Frisco to give him a taste of his own medicine.

  But San Francisco detectives W. S. Jones and John Coffee had long been on his trail and had almost caught him once on Francisco Street. A special officer named Brandon would have nabbed him, too, after a tip sent him to a Second and Howard Street saloon but his kidneys betrayed him. He chose the wrong time to visit the gent’s room in answer to a call of nature. While he was out of the barroom Harris came and left. Police Officer McDermott was thrown off the trail when a man named King, a quartermaster on the steamer Quang Si, just in from China, told him that he had seen Harris in Yokohama. McDermott offered to go to Japan to bring him back if Mr. George would up the reward to $1,000. Before the Post’s editor had time to make up his mind a new and accurate tip came that he was still in town. McDermott followed it up and around three in the afternoon of November 5th, he, officer McDonough and special officer Brandon went to tiny Clarence Place, a dead-end alley between Second and Third Streets near Townsend, south of the Slot and not far from posh South Park.

  In 1873 Clarence Place was on a hill surrounded on all sides by cuts or steeply graded streets. It stood alone, isolated from the neighboring city blocks and consisted of only four one-story frame buildings, one of wh
ich was vacant. Harris was hiding out there as “Mr. Kermode” in the house nearest Townsend Street, owned by a German family named Cameno.

  McDermott sent McDonough around to the rear of the building to cut off Harris’s escape. Then he rapped twice on the front door but got no answer. Fearing his prey might somehow escape, he broke in the front door. Harris quickly ran to the rear window, lifted it, threw the blinds open and stuck his head out—right into the muzzle of McDonough’s pistol. The officer, calm as a clam, said, “Mr. Harris. If you come out, I will blow the head off you. I am an officer. Consider yourself under arrest.”

  “No, don’t shoot,” cried Sunrise Harris. “I submit to arrest.” McDermott in the meantime was grappling with him but Harris said, “I’ll surrender. Put no irons on me!”

  The poor landlady, seeing her front door burst from its hinge’s and two men brandishing revolvers at her star boarder of a week—“Mr. Kermode”—fell into a dead faint. Of all people, Harris came to her rescue. He knelt beside her saying, “Don’t be afraid. I am the mate of the Sunrise, for whom they’ve been searching. They won’t hurt you.”

  An Alta reporter sped to interview Harris before he was lodged in city prison. “His face is not repulsive,” the newsman reported, “but when subjects distasteful to him are introduced, he lowers his brows and a storm of indignation gathers over them.”

  Approaching him, the reporter asked, “How are you, Harris?”

  “Very well. I think I’ve seen you before.”

  “Perhaps you have. How have you spent your time since you left the Sunrise?”

  “Very well. I left the ship with the reporters that Sunday night and paid the boatman who brought us over. I stayed around awhile and went to the Bella Union. I visited several places of amusement since.”

  “Why did you not return?” asked the Post man.

  “Well, a friend of mine at the Bella Union and myself talked about the Sunrise affair in the papers. I concluded upon some remarks he made not to go back for a few days.”

  “Where have you been since?”

  “I’ve stopped at any place nearest to me when night came on, at any of those lodging houses.”

  “How long were you in Clarence Place?” “About a week.”

  “Did Captain Clarke know where you were?”

  “No, he did not. What paper do you represent?”

  “I represent the Alta.”

  Harris was bothered by this answer. He walked to and fro in his cell and said bitterly, “Bah! What a bad paper the Alta is!”

  “We have treated you and Clarke fairly,” protested the reporter.

  “Yes, but nothing would have happened at all but for the Alta. The Call and Chronicle published true statements which I gave them myself. It was you who stirred up the whole business.”

  “Have you seen the Call’s report?”

  “Yes, I have. I read one one day and undertook to go through it and mark down what was false. When I got through, it was all marked out.”

  “Well, what do you think of that?”

  “Well, what would I think of it? They were all alike.”

  “The Alta, too?”

  “No, but the Alta hounded me the worst of all. When all the papers go for a man, they would ruin an angel from Heaven.”

  “Did you leave the city at all?”

  “No, I did not. I didn’t even cross the bar.”

  “Why, then, didn’t you come forward to assist Captain Clarke? Were you afraid of arrest?”

  “No, I was not. But I supposed they would not give my testimony any weight. I did not run away from arrest or justice.”

  “How old are you?” asked the reporter.

  “I am thirty-three years old. I have been twenty-three years at sea, and fifteen an officer.”

  “Did you leave this port [earlier] on the Sunrise?” asked the newsman of Farrell-alias-Harris.

  “Yes, and went to New York.”

  “Why did you leave the Sunrise in New York? Were you not a fugitive from the law there?”

  “No, I was not. I left the ship because I was not paid to remain with her while in port.”

  “Did you strike the sailors as reported?”

  “Well, I never did! But, you must not suppose a man is an angel, must you? When we are at sea with lives and property at stake, we must look out. Sometimes we get a lazy crew, who care nothing for what may happen. What is to be done with them? We must strike them. Don’t ladies in the city who have servant girls strike them when they do not attend to their business?”

  “I was not aware that they did,” answered the reporter.

  “Well, they do. But I never struck anyone to injure him. Never with a belaying pin or lifter or heaver, but with my fists only. And never to kill them.”

  The interview was interrupted by the prisoner’s supper arriving. He had ordered it (coffee, bread and beef) himself and paid for it. The newspaperman later rejoined Harris in the county jail and continued his quizzing of the mate.

  “Didn’t you suppose that your careless exposure of yourself would lead to your arrest?”

  “Well, I rather enjoyed the efforts made to catch me and the expeditions which left for the country with provisions to maintain them during the chase. I often laughed at them. I took my dinner regularly at Campi’s Restaurant on Clay Street, near the Call office, and discussed the Sunrise business with men at the table. I told them the reports were lies and that I was the mate of the ship.”

  “Did you ever go by the name of Farrell?”

  “Never!”

  “Did you not ship from this port under that name?”

  “I did not.”

  “But you have an alias?”

  “Well, my dear fellow,” the smooth “monster” replied, “did you ever know a man who has gone through as much of the world as I have on one name? I took my mother’s name once—McDonald.”

  “Did not two men go overboard on the voyage to New York?”

  “No, they did not. They died on board and were buried at sea.”

  “Who directed you to the house on Clarence Street? Is it a boardinghouse or a lodging house?”

  “No, it is kept by a Dutch family. I was sent there by the express man who took my baggage.”

  “Where was your baggage? On board the ship?”

  “No, where I paid for it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the names of streets. I was on board the ship though, since I left. I went on board one night as the handiest place to sleep. I went away at seven o’clock in the morning. The captain did not see me.”

  When the reporter mentioned that Henry George had had an accident and hurt himself, Harris said he could not sympathize with him. He claimed that if George had been aboard the Sunrise, “He would have changed his tune. He would have said of the men in the crew, ‘Club them!’”

  Surprisingly few were in court when Sunrise Harris was arraigned on one hundred and six counts of cruelty. The attention span of the public, like that of the infant, is short. They were already losing interest in the drawn-out affair. But their interest would revive.

  The first witness against Harris was Wittpfennig. He gave practically the same testimony as before, in regard to Harris’s beating of Brown and “the Grocer” (Condiff), and his instruction of Corrigan in seamanship via a rope’s end. He remembered Harris hitting Peter Johnson with a tar bucket and beating him with a beef-barrel stave for fifteen minutes. When Lejude, no sailor, did not understand the mate’s orders and cried out, “Me no savez l’Anglais!” Harris had just muttered “I’ll give you lessons” and pounded him. When Wittpfennig dropped the topsail-tye, Harris had not only shouted at him “What are you doing up there, you son of a bitch!” but had hit him so hard in the eye that the
bruises were apparent five weeks later.

  Andros’s attempt to trip Wittpfennig and “to impeach his truthfulness” failed again and Harris nervously played with a gold pencil, jotted down notes and whispered (denials) to his counsel.

  Furt’s testimony reminded the court that Condiff was a mass of bruises, with one on his chest as large as two men’s fists. After being ordered by Harris, “Go forward, you son of a bitch, and braid sennet,” he had disappeared. Harris had not only grown tired of trying to teach Corrigan the compass but he also grew bored with thumping him, according to Furt. So he finally gave him a powerful punch which sent the boy sailing off the forward hatch and onto the deck. “You son of a bitch, you will never learn anything,” growled the disappointed quarter-deck tutor. Furt revealed why Harris was particularly brutal toward Lejude. In beating him at one time, he had accidentally cut himself on the man’s scraper. Harris then told him he would forgive no man who drew his blood. Another time, for no reason, as Egalen was drinking at the pump, the mate came up behind him and struck him with a zinc basin weighing six or seven pounds, cutting his face and head and knocking out one of his teeth. Harris had rasped, “I’ve got it in for you. I’ll learn you to tell me to tell the captain that Johnson is sick and cannot work.” Most of the rest of the testimony was repetitious of what was heard during Clarke’s trial, but the jury did learn that Harris had tried to force a stick of wood, a foot long, into Johnson’s mouth as he beat him with a barrel stave.

  Peter Verschoor, the carpenter’s assistant, had to testify through an interpreter, as he spoke only German. The mate had beat him with his fist from time to time and kicked him once in the eye. This was new testimony but it did not excite the court as much as Harris, forgetting he was a prisoner, getting up and walking out of court at the recess. When he was missed, officers flew after him and grabbed him outside.