>>19948490 (LB)
Once a shanghai tunnel, always a shanghai tunnel.
When sailors came into the San Francisco harbor on assignment, many would desert their posts to seek fortune in the bustling gold rush, and ended up at the bar of the Hippodrome nightclub.
As the shipyards filled up with abandoned vessels, their cargo rotting with no crew to haul it, one crafty bartendress made a dark deal with the exasperated ship captains. Putting on a sly smile, she poured glasses of strong liquors, heavily drugged with laudanum, to send the hapless sailors into a deep sleep. Then, after dragging them down secret tunnels beneath the city to awaiting ships at the coast, she would sell the sailors to the highest-bidding captains, desperate for able-bodied ship hands.
Several days later, when the poor sailors finally came to, they were horrified to learn that they had been conscripted to a crew against their will, halfway to Asia, too far from shore to have any hope of escape. They'd been Shanghaied.
Sauce if anyone cares ..
https://www.driveswimfly.com/revealing-secret-tunnels-on-san-franciscos-barbary-coast/