My dad was a fisherman, a weir fisherman back in the days of brush weirs and tarred twine. And he was always looking for the big catch, the schools of silvery herring that would make us rich, or at least get us through the winter. But they never came, the big schools. Occasionally we'd have enough for a carrier, that's what the boats that carried fish from the weirs and stop seines to the factory were called and still are — the few that survive. I had always admired carriers. They looked like old work shoes plowing through the water with their high pilothouse sterns and long foredecks. Below decks were divided into thirds. Aft engine room, foc's'cle forward and in between the fish hold. Later in years I worked on a carrier, Quick Step II, with Cap'n Charlie Hooper of Friendship, Long Island. If you worked on a carrier and were not the captain, you were known as "going with." We "carried" fish for the Witham' Green Island Packing Company of Rockland. When I went aboard, the only food was a box of stale donuts, a can of Canadian kippers and box of saltines. I asked Charlie when he had a decent meal. He said when he got home at Frenchboro. I went up to the A&P and bought two boxes of groceries, and for supper at Winter Harbor on Vinalhaven that night we had roast beef and all the fixings cooked on the Shipmate. Well, Cap'n Charlie and I sailed the Quick Step all summer eating high on Green Island, but bringing in fish. We'd land at Rockland with deck loads. The factory whistle had blown and the "girls" were waiting for us. We'd tell them we had "sixes and eights," meaning the size of fish and the size the women packers made the most money. Charlie and I got several proposals. If Quick Step hadn't been a "leaker," the summer would have been idyllic. A leaker meaning she leaked fish curry from the fish hold up under the foc's'cle. I had to pump her daily or the stink would overwhelm us, let alone our appetite for roast chicken. Charlie knew every rock and ledge from the Mussel Ridges to Cutler. He hit most of them. Once one night when I was making beef stew, Charlie took Quick Step right up and over a breaking ledge. I think it was Roaring Bull. The stew ended up on the cabin floor looking like a big pan of chocolate chip cookies. Charlie appeared in the cabin way and asked if I was all right. I said, yes, but the stew ain't. Charlie said he was taking a short cut and cut her a little too close. Hot black coffee and dunked donuts for supper. Charlie, on Fridays, would say, "We'll go looking for a trip of fish." I knew where he'd be looking. Home at Friendship. I spent most weekends, me and Quick Step, tied to the Frenchboro wharf listening to Downeast country songs while Charlie cuddled at home. The only thing to break the monotony was occasionally a lobsterman, most probably a Lunt, who would feel sorry for me and come by with a couple of feel better lobsters. Anyway, it was a great summer. I made more money carrying herring than my dad ever did catching them. The next summer, I went to tugboats, the Sequin, not a "going with" but deck crewman under the command of Cap'n Ralph Curtis of Stockton, pushing big vessels around and listening to engineer Eddie Rich of Rockland complain about the food. But I missed the sardine carriers, their salt-bagged decks, old shoe profiles, the smell of leaky fish holds and captains who took beef stew shortcuts over Roaring Bull ledges. But what the hell, all fishermen are optimists. Mike Brown is an independent syndicated columnist living in Northport. The views he expresses do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper. |
