Shanghaiing in Portland: P-town's time as shanghaiing capital of the world (2 of 2)

Shanghaiing in Portland: P-town's time as shanghaiing capital of the world (2 of 2)

Author: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com) January 23, 2026 Duration: 9:31
AS OF THE time of this writing, there is some disagreement over the status of Oregon’s largest city. It all came to a head last month when the President of the United States referred to it as “war-ravaged Portland” in a Tweet, and locals responded by going on Amazon and buying every inflatable frog costume they could get their hands on. Interesting times, indeed! A little over 100 years ago, though, you could have made the case that parts of Portland were — not war-ravaged, exactly, but probably the most dangerous city in North America in which to go out drinking. But the risk you ran wasn’t getting killed, injured, or — uh, ravaged. It was the risk of waking up the next morning with a splitting headache and a bad case of seasickness, on board a barque headed for Liverpool. With an angry first mate screaming at you to get up and get to work and probably giving you a few kicks in the ribs to drive the point home that, whatever you thought your occupation was last night, this morning you were a sailor. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2511a1006c.portland-shanghaiing-capital-of-world-710.076.html)

The Offbeat Oregon History Podcast is a daily service from the Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column. Each weekday morning, a strange-but-true story from Oregon's history from the archives of the column is uploaded. An exploding whale, a few shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Offbeat Oregon History podcast
Podcast Episodes
Bob Straub stopped plan to put highway on the beach [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:35
State treasurer Straub was a regular visitor to the state park through which the highway department wished to route the main Oregon Coast arterial. He took one look at the department's plans — and declared war. (Nestucca…
Shanghaied in Astoria: A once-perilous port city [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:50
Desperate for men, shanghai artists once tried to kidnap the local Methodist minister. He turned out not to be as soft a target as they'd anticipated. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203d-astoria-o…
Secretary imposed martial law on rowdy town [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:45
Don't be fooled: Fern Hobbs was a secretary in the “Secretary of Defense” sense of the word. A practicing attorney, she was the highest-paid woman in public service. Copperfield's city fathers thought they could charm he…
Legislators shut down Salem with a raging party [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:43
The six-week-long drunken party was thrown by the notoriously rascally Jonathan Bourne Jr. to keep the state Legislature from convening, so it couldn't elect John H. Mitchell to the U.S. Senate. It worked — well, sort of…
Wolf Creek Tavern was a refuge for Hollywood stars [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:56
THERE WERE TIMES, during Hollywood’s golden age, when Clark Gable simply couldn’t be found anywhere. Studio executives would search frantically for the top-shelf star, needing to talk to him about a project and facing a…
Marie Aioe Dorion was a wilderness-survival ninja (Part 1 of 3) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:46
As the Native American bride of a French-Canadian interpreter, she joined the Astorian Party on its overland voyage to Oregon to set up a trading post on the Columbia River. Did she know what they were getting into? (Sna…
Legendary Civil War ship met a sad end in Coos Bay [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:50
During its glory days, the Gertrude was the fastest blockade runner in the Confederate fleet. But just 17 years later, it was just another dumpy old steamer on a lowly coastwise run, wrecked in what was probably an insur…
Dispute over 'McQuinn Strip' lasted more than a century (Part 2 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:21
The dispute over the McQuinn Strip was no simple neighborhood kerfuffle. The amount of land in dispute was roughly 80,000 acres — close to 10 percent of the whole Warm Springs Indian Reservation. And the dispute burned h…