Kinda like ships passing in the night...

The ship had earned it's name, Shanghai Ghost as an opium smuggler in the 20s. She had made the passage from Shanghai to San Francisco numerous times, her midway stop the port of Honolulu. In Honolulu, most of the opium was off-loaded by dark of night under the watchful eye of a very corrupt harbor-master. From Honolulu, the contraband traveled by various sources to cities along the coast of California, while The Shanghai Ghost completed her voyage in the guise of a rusty but respectable mail packet, hauling the Island's mail to the mainland.

Her smuggling days had come to a fittingly inglorious, although quite mysterious, end. She was found abandoned in the shipping lane 800 miles west of Hawaii, her hold ripped open and pilfered. Her master and owner, John Debs Tyler, was found in the bridge with a long and fatal incision in his throat. Most who knew him agreed that his end was a classic case of the various and sundry wicked pigeons he had nurtured coming home to roost. The ship was sold as salvage in Los Angeles, repainted and overhauled, and in the year of 1933 put to sea as a light-cargo hauler and passenger ship re-christened The Eastern Sun . But the name never stuck, although tales of the malevolent influence of John Debs Tyler did. He was said to haunt the bridge and Captain's Cabin, and could sometimes be seen by the stern rail smoking a clay pipe, most often in the quiet latitudes where he had met his death.

The ship had eventually rusted back to a faithful replica of it's smuggling days, and the ownership passed to one Owen Pedersen, who had been an acquaintance of Tyler's. His sole contribution to the restoration and upkeep of the steamer was to take 5 gallons of black paint, and emblazon The Shanghai Ghost on her stern. She even resumed the old San Francisco/Shanghai Route, creaking and plunging through the Pacific night with her load of passengers, cargo, and ghosts.