They Promised Clean Bunks and Good Food. The Sailors Knew Better.
At a longshoremen's meeting in Tacoma, a delegate described how ship's officers lured landsmen aboard with false promises — and told of a sailor who drowned swimming for shore rather than sail on the Henry Failing.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
At a meeting of the longshoremen at the 'Sinks,' a delegate declared that the methods used to secure sailors were not above suspicion. Circulars, he said, were misrepresented to induce the men to ship. The sailors were promised good food, clean quarters, a comfortable amount of work with regular hours, and many other things which the masters of the vessels had no intention of carrying out. In this way a man, while not really 'shanghaied,' was induced to sign for a voyage on misrepresentations, and when the true conditions were discovered he found it too late to refuse.
He severely criticized the quarters and food furnished the sailors. According to his statements, quarters were always insufficient, the board was starvation fare, water was doled out in insufficient quantities, and the men were compelled on some ships to eat on deck in all kinds of weather. On foreign ships, he claimed, the crews were treated with far more consideration than on American vessels.
In this connection he mentioned the case of the Henry Failing, which lay in Tacoma harbor two weeks waiting for a crew. At the same time there were over 200 able-bodied seamen in Tacoma. They knew the conditions existing on the vessel and would not ship. He said it was a favorite trick of captains and other officers on such vessels to go to young men, especially laborers, and that every form of deceit was practiced to get them on board.
In speaking of the matter after the meeting, Mr. Peterson said he believed the death of the sailor who was drowned the other day, in making his escape from the Henry Failing, was due to the fact that he had been deceived. When he had signed the articles and gone aboard the vessel he made up his mind to risk a long swim rather than endure a voyage under the conditions that appeared. He was drowned a short distance from the shore.
“He made up his mind to risk a long swim rather than endure a voyage under the conditions that appeared. He was drowned a short distance from the shore.”
A century before 'ghost jobs' and predatory recruiting, Tacoma's waterfront ran on the same broken promise: sign here, and the conditions turn out to be nothing like the pitch. The detail that stings is the local labor market — 200 able-bodied seamen in port who knew the Henry Failing's reputation and simply refused to board. Worker knowledge, passed by word of mouth, was the only protection these men had.
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