Shanghaied in Portland

Shanghaied in Portland

Still in Portland, my high-school pal Chrissy and I just walked around Old Chinatown. Amazing buildings, though it's where you find all the porn shops, aggressive young homeless thugs and seedy bars. And then she tells me about the tunnels.

From Fodor's:

In Portland's Victorian heyday in the second half of the 19th century, the neighborhoods near the waterfront saw the seedier side of the city's activities, with saloons, bordellos, and boardinghouses catering to the sailors and other working folk who passed through Portland looking for a night of relaxation after a day or month of hard labor. But a night of drinking turned into an ongoing nightmare for thousands of unsuspecting young men, when they woke up the next morning on a ship bound for Asia. They had been Shanghaied.

That is, their drink had been drugged, and their unconscious bodies carried through a series of underground tunnels leading to the waterfront, where they were sold to a ship's captain as slave labor, not to awaken until they were at sea, with no way to escape, and no options but to work or die. It might sound like a far-fetched legend told to wide-eyed children to keep them away from the unsavory parts of town, but this cautionary tale is no myth. If it helps to prove it, you can take a tour of the very tunnels into which unwitting victims vanished.

The tours are run by the Cascade Geographic Society, which says this kidnapping went on from the 1850's to as late as the 1940's. Unfortunately I'll miss the the tour this trip.
- posted by Amy @ 7/27/2005 07:04:00 PM