Green’s Dictionary of Slang

any area of a port city where sailors gather, drink, whore and take lodgings, e.g. London’s Ratcliff Highway, San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.

1830		J.F. Watson Annals Phila. 388: Many years ago there was a range of low wooden houses on the west side of Front street [...] they were often called ‘Sailor’s town,’ being boarding houses and places of carousal for sailors .
1887		G. Davis Recoll. Sea-Wanderer 82: Filthy, drunken and withal notorious ruffians, who, picked up in the slums of large seaport towns, are ‘shanghaied’ aboard by the infernal scoundrels that infest ‘sailor towns’ and gain a detestable living by first pandering to the follies and vices of seamen, and then, having appropriated their advance and stolen their outfits, kidnap them on board ship and abandon them to the ill-treatment of their officers and the inclemency of the stormy Atlantic.
1898		H.E. Hamblen Tom Benton's Luck 63: He had volunteered [...] to try to induce sailors to attend the Bethel meetings, rather than pass their time in the numerous hell-holes with which sailor town abounded.