 |
| Satty - Shanghai City |
The next set to be posted at the Royale Studio blog is Shanghai'd Sailor which seems to have been a direct inspiration for Etienne/Stephen's well known story 'Sailor Beware'.
You can follow progress via the link above.
Shanghaiing sounds like some wicked, Oriental practice, but in fact it was widely employed by British and American Sea Captains to crew their vessels, by abducting men from waterfronts and forcing them to work on their ships. A civilian equivalent of the Royal Navy 'Press Gang'.
The image above (attributed to 'Satty') shows a group of kidnapped men being rowed to their new home and workplace under the direction of a Dickensian overseer. Their muscular, black oarsman seems to be providing a demonstration of their new working conditions as he reels back from a whip lash. A nice ship mate to have with you though! The picture itself seems to be a montage of different images rather than an original drawing.
According to some sources the reference to Shanghai was because it was the destination of many of the ships, but it seems more likely that it was simply a colourful example of a foreign place miles from home where the language and customs were so completely alien that abductee, should he escape or be dumped there, would be in a dire predicament.
Incidentally, Sailor Beware! was also a 1950's British stage play and film about a sailor who has doubts about his forthcoming marriage, thanks to his domineering, future mother-in-law. There's no gay subtext or enslavement angle beyond the traditional jokes about marriage, but the catchy title passed readily into British, camp, gay usage for obvious reasons. Basil Clavering didn't use it for his piece and I don't know what made Etienne settle on it for his American story.
