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037 Sailortown
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Sailortown,
Titel:
Sailortown
Naam uitgever:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. - E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
Jaar van uitgave:
1997
Omschrijving:
Liedtekst en Liedtekst verklaring
Aantal pagina's:
360
Taal:
Engels
Plaats van uitgave:
London & Newe York
Auteur:
Stan Hugill
THE PACIFIC, AUSTRALIA, ASIA, AND AFRICA
Spainer magazine," the crew of the London steamer Aldgate attempted to leave their ship here at this time. The captain told them to think it over or they would find themselves 'to leeward' if they held out. The Harbour Master, who was the Port Magistrate as well, said he would give them ninety days 'up at the Mount' if they refused to sail, and after some shenanigans they gave in and sailed. But many crews did not sail, and frequently Chinese seamen were shipped in their place for a Japan passage. Bias Bay, the stronghold of pirates, lies north-east of Hong Kong,
and, from the days of the clippers right up to the Second World War, Chinese pirates have worried merchant shipping using these waters. In the days of the tea clippers they even came right into Hong Kong Harbour to attack them, with the British Navy hard by. After ships were plundered by these Oriental buccaneers the loot would very often turn up in Hong Kong, and the famous street markets, where such stolen and pirated stuff was sold, were located in the notorious thoroughfare known as Upper Lascar Street, or, to one and all East o' Suez, 'Thief Street'. Here, on the stalls, would be found quadrants and sextants, compasses and ship's bells, shipwright's tools, fids and marline-spikes, in fact everything to be found aboard a ship, movable and immovable, mixed up with old clothes and Chinese curios. Shanghai became known to the Western sailor in the days of the
opium clippers, and by the seventies was a regular port of call for the tea clippers. An old sailor forebitter of the forties and fifties runs:
It's now we've arrived in the port of Shanghai, We'll go ashore shipmates, strange faces to see.
This song gives the oldtime sailor pronunciation of Shanghai— Shang-hee. In early days ships all moored in the river in three or four lines mainly opposite the Bund, and as the tea trade prospered these tiers stretched three miles or more. As at Hong Kong and other China Coast ports, the seamen went back and forth to their ships in sampans. These sampans, at this time, had a bad name, a name which clung to them right up to the First World War. It was said that many sailors, if a bit tipsy and sometimes when quite sober, never made their ships thanks to the vermin who sculled—or 'yuloed'-— these boats. The usual practice was to demand either heavy 'cum- shaw' or else raise the stipulated fee for ferrying, and if the seaman didn't agree, then the sampan man would club him, rob him, and dump the corpse overboard. Later all sampans were forced to be numbered and registered in order to prevent such assaults. Hankow Wharf in the seventies was well known to seamen, but
it was not until this century that ships began to lie at the Pootung Wharf, and these were mainly Blue Funnel steamers. In the sixties ' Vol. I, no. 5, August 1963. 300
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Organisatie: Shanty Nederland
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