Founding Fish
Alewife Harvesters Organize
by Catherine Schmitt
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All the signs were there that morning in May in Jeffrey Pierce’s backyard. A clear, tumbling stream flowing into the Eastern River, a tidal tributary of the Kennebec. Cormorants skulking about the flat waters of the ebbing Eastern. Tiny white flowers blooming among the reddish leaflets of shadbush along the banks. Black flies hovering about but only a few biting. The stream thriving with flashes of silver and a purplish sheen, here and there a fin rising above the surface.
The alewives were running.
In fact, Mill Stream was full of fish, splashing with what could only be anticipation, impatience, exhaustion. These alewives had traveled hundreds of miles to this spot, driven by a memory of the smell of home. The alewives took up the whole stream, chasing each other in circles in the pools, packing the channels, leaving little room for other species who must wait their turn. The alewives are the first fish of the spring, the first of the sea rushing inland.
And Jeffrey Pierce was waiting for them.
Pierce, who purchased the property in Dresden Mills 12 years ago, and has since cleaned it up and installed a reverse-set net that just yesterday trapped 90 bushels, is the spokesman for the Alewife Harvesters of Maine, a new association that formed in response to a forthcoming amendment to the ASMFC management plan for shad and river herring. Fearing a potential closure of the fishery because of severe declines in fish runs elsewhere, Pierce and others attended a public information session on the matter in January.
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The alewives took up the whole stream, chasing each other in circles in the pools, packing the channels, leaving little room for other species who must wait their turn. The alewives are the first fish of the spring, the first of the sea rushing inland. John McPhee documented the importance of the alewife to the founding of the colonies and therefore the nation in his book Founding Fish. Catherine Schmitt photo |
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Gundalow - The Work Horse Of The Rivers
by Mike Crowe
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Once the common means of short-hop, heavy-load bulk shipping on Maine rivers, the gundalow has long been forgotten. In some ways it was easy to forget. They were slow, bulky, roughly put together and anything but a thrill to sail. The gundalow was to the agile sloop boat or clipper ship, what the fork lift is to a Masserati. The gundalow never generated tales of running to safe harbor before a hurricane or plunging into the tempest rounding the horn. But there were many of them in service before the internal combustion engine. For those whose business it was to run them up and down river, it was a way of life - a life more akin to Huck Finn’s than to the captains of coasters, clippers and Down Easters.
Container ships that arrive in deep water ports to unload cargo are much larger than the ships of a few decades ago. But these ships are restricted to fewer ports with enough deep water. Tractor-trailer trucks take the containers from these ships directly to their destinations. Two hundred years ago, similar offloading arrangements had to be made for sailing ships that also required deep water. At most ports, horse-drawn wagons and carts hauled the cargo from those ships to regional destinations.
Gundalows were used on other rivers along the Maine coast, but not in the numbers seen around Portsmouth. River ferries, that were towed across with ropes or in some cases sailed across, were flat barges not unlike gundalows. There were gundalows on the Kennebec, Penobscot Bay and other rivers, but the regionally unique geography of the tidal basin at Portsmouth made them essential.
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| The gundalow resembled other vessels that plied coastal rivers in other parts of the world at the time. Known on other Maine rivers, the network of waterways upstream of Portsmouth, N.H. made it a common sight. In 1800’s there were 65 brick yards in the Great Basin area. Gundalows brought cordwood in and bricks out to Portsmouth ships. Granite, cotton bales, lumber and marsh hay, if it was heavy or bulky, it went by gundalow. Photo Courtesy of Historic New England |
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