Very few of these ships had their full complement of seamen on board. Most of the sailors deserted during the vessels’ stay in port—and one cannot blame them, when it is remembered that the pay in these ships from British ports was two pounds ten a month, with the poorest quality of food that it was possible for the ship-owner to buy, and only just sufficient of that to keep body and soul together.
The pay out of the Australian ports was, for homeward-bounders, five pounds ten, and in the coast and inter-Colonial traders seven pounds a month, with a sufficiency of good, nourishing food. In addition to the inducements offered by the coast traders, there was plenty of work to be found on shore, for the Queensland, Victorian, and South Australian goldfields were in full swing. The consequence was that there was great difficulty in getting men to man the ships when they were ready for sea.
Like most seaports in those days of sailing-ships, the town was full of sailors’ boarding-houses. The tactics and ways of procuring men employed by the proprietors of these places were not such as would stand the light of day, but nevertheless they did a thriving business.
One of the most noted characters in the town was a boarding-house keeper named Dan Sullivan, a scoundrel to the backbone. He was notorious for the number of men he had “shanghaied” out of the port, but, strange to say, he had gained a certain amount of power in the town, and shipmasters requiring men were, under the circumstances, compelled to deal with him, although at the same time many of them had the utmost contempt for the fellow.
Sullivan kept a low-class drinking saloon with a free-and-easy dancing-room attached to it. The boarders lived in the rooms overhead. This was the only dancing saloon in the town, and was thronged with sailors every night. The liquor sold was, needless to say, vile stuff, but men who have been living for months on weevily biscuit and “salt-horse” have very little taste left in their mouths, and as long as the decoction was hot and came out of a bottle it passed muster.
Sullivan was an adept at drugging liquor, and he always kept materials at hand for that purpose. Just a little tobacco ash dropped in the glass when pouring out the drinks, and the thing was done. When he required a few sailors for a ship ready to sail, he picked out the likeliest men in the room—usually strangers—and when the seamen, hot and thirsty with dancing, ordered drinks through the women who acted as waitresses, these Delilahs would bring the prepared stuff, and soon the men would feel muddled and sleepy and would go into the side room and sink down on the benches.
Sullivan would then slip in among them.
“Halloa, mates! What’s the matter? Feel queer, eh? Ah, it’s the dancing and the hot weather. I’ll send you a good tot that will put you all right.”
He would then send one of the girls in with a good glass of hot whisky—drugged, and that would be all the men would know for some time. When they came to their senses they found themselves in a strange ship, out of sight of land, without a stitch of clothes beyond what they stood up in. Of course, there was generally a row, but it invariably ended in their turning to work and making the best of a bad bargain.
