White man's Shanghai was rich and beautiful. The native's Shanghai and the river, an anthill of poverty and misery. Courtesy, the San Francisco Maritime Museum, Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley Collection.
A Merchant Seaman Remembers Shanghai By K.E. Hillmar At Seattle's Elliot Bay Park by the Cargill grain terminal where ships of most nations are often visitors, the seagulls have discovered something new to them. A spanking big and new freighter, flying a red ensign with five stars, one large and four smaller ones-indicating the People's Republic of China-has just been our visitor. A proud-looking trailblazer was the Liu Lin Hai of Shanghai, presumably the forerunner to a fleet of similar ships to come. If the vessel and its sprightly crew are an indication of progress and development in China as a whole, then it must surely be counted as one of the wonders in the world of economy and politics. The Chinese merchant fleet of the past was a rather primitive conglomeration of vessels, composed mostly of small and old freighters for coastwise trade and thousands of windpowered sampans and junks for local service and river traffic. The coastal steamers were usually commanded by white officers of many nationalities. Some observations and recollections by a former merchant mariner will, perhaps, serve to point out to some degree the unbelievable conditions prevailing in the great seaport of Shanghai about fifty years ago. It may be past history now, but 32
a past still remembered by a multitude of humans in the beehive city on the Whangpoo .
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The year was 1927, the ship, the Norwegian freighter Hinnoy, bound for Shanghai with a load of lumber from the Columbia River. The arrival in the East China Sea was a relief from the ice and snow of the stormy North Pacific, but also a new experience, pointing out to a novice the struggle for existence in parts of the world . One indelible impression on entering those waters was the sense of being transported back in time two hundred years, and another, the feeling that the Chinese borderland extended at least a hundred miles out into the ocean . For out there on the dark waters there must have been ten thousand people manning a thousand fishing boats of all descriptions. Dilapidated junks and little sampans with burlap or bamboo sails, often with women and children aboard, were observed pulling nets and handling lines by raw muscle power, a hundred miles from the nearest shore. As the calm day ended and dark descended on the scene, a new picture appeared . Weak kerosene lights displayed on the vessels transformed the scenery into a vast village seemingly infested by fireflies . How many in that
struggling mass of humanity would again see solid land would never be known . As if to demonstrate the frailty of human existence in the part of the world loosely called the Orient, not even the freighter Hinnoy was immune. During the night when approaching the Shanghai lightship, a man of the ship's crew was seen standing on the high deckload of lumber against a lifeline, looking out into the night. Suddenly he discarded his slippers and as if preparing for a quick dip over the side, swung himself gracefully over the safety rope and was gone. The incident, which was observed from the navigation bridge, caused the officer on watch to set off the emergency alarm and to stop the ship's headway. Men were roused out and a lifeboat lowered, to search the water for the victim. In the meantime, many suspicious looking craft had gathered in the vicinity to watch the commotion, and before long the master recalled the boat and prepared again to get under way. Piracy on the Chinese coast, particularly in the South China Sea, was nothing unusual. Ships on the coastal run were equipped with barbed wire along railings, and machine guns on bridge and boatdecks for protection. The old method of capture was to find a ship cripSEA HISTORY, FALL 1980