Bernard Raynes–Fisherman

Bernard passed away on July 12, 2013

See obit in Contents list

This story was originally published in the Fishermen’s Voice in 2006.

Fishermen are the last of the world’s hunters. Hunters who dragged the parts of a mastodon into the village didn’t get a new pick-up, but on the other hand, they probably didn’t have to clean up after the feed either. According to either the conservative estimate for human life on earth at 20,000 years, or the scientific estimate at about 3-4 million years, humans, like other animals, have been hunting for a long time. A few decades in front of the television isn’t likely to have completely erased the impact of this past.

A few thousand years ago, Maine-coast Native Americans hunted swordfish from rocks when they swam inshore. Today, among the last of the swordfish hunters in the Gulf of Maine is Bernard Raynes of Owls Head. Bernard is a lifelong fisherman—a veteran of many fisheries—from a family of fishermen that goes back to the earliest days of European settlement on the Gulf of Maine coast. Raynes lives fishing like a fish lives in water; it’s in his blood, his heart and his mind.

Raynes’ approach to fishing, as well as to life, were shaped by many generations of fishermen on both sides of his family—his experiences with them directly, and the tales of those he never met. The ways of the grandparents and parents, early days spent in boats and around water in the once-common fish houses of islands and coast, described how things were and must be for Raynes.

Raynes is the eleventh generation of Rayneses in North America. After his ancestor Francis Raynes arrived in Falmouth, Maine in 1646, his ancestors have lived and fished in the Gulf of Maine ever since. His mother’s family, the LeBlancs, are among the original settlers who came to Acadia in 1646. The English and French contested that early settlement’s boundary, and they eventually found their way to Nova Scotia before coming to Maine. Ironically, that border dispute would surface again to impact the Rayneses.

Fishing in the Gulf of Maine has evolved over the decades and centuries. For the small operators, things changed less, leaving aspects of the hunt in their occupation. For some fishermen, the hunt was a prominent part of their fishing until very recent years. A few of these were the sword fishermen who hunted with harpoons.

Raynes’ paternal grandparents lived on Eagle Island, then Andrews Island and later, Matinicus. His father, Alton, was born on a houseboat near Mussel Ridges. His maternal grandparents went to Criehaven in 1922, where his parents met at social events on nearby islands. Bernard was born on Vinalhaven and raised in Owls Head. He began spending summers on Matinicus, lobster fishing with his grandfather when he was six. He later fished with his father, on Alton’s 20-year-old Novi boat, dragging, shrimping and lobstering through his teenage years.

After he married his wife, Eleanor, in 1956, making ends meet on his father’s Novi boat got tougher. The industrial beam trawler fleet was growing, but Raynes steered clear. Instead, after their first child was born, he and Eleanor spent the winter fishing in Florida. But the price of fish was low and they returned to Maine broke.

Times were tough. In 1960 he went out with Earnie Kavanagh of Newfoundland, long-lining swordfish.

“He was good on the water,” said Raynes. “He knew enough to run inside Sable Island coming down from Newfoundland. In the winter the deep water outside Sable throws up some big seas, as it did for the Andrea Gail, of “The Perfect Storm” fame.”

According to Raynes, the money was good, but the trips away from home were long and he didn’t go out again until 1975.

After grandfather Del died, Raynes didn’t get out to Matinicus much. A 25-year-old sardine carrier came on the market and he decided to sell Del’s Matinicus farm to buy the boat.

The Ruth and Mary needed work, but when finished, it became their workhorse; chasing sardines from weirs and seiners. There were good herring markets during WWII and many carriers were built. When Bernard and Eleanor’s sardine markets folded they went fish dragging, and later, shrimping.

Raynes made a deal with a Norwegian company that bought all he caught. The company wanted the shrimp cooked fresh, so he rigged up a cooker on deck using a burner from a household furnace and cooked them as soon as they came out of the water. The demand was there and the price was good.

In the mid 1970’s Raynes wanted a new boat so he built one based on a half-model his father had carved. The Irene and Alton, named after his parents, is a 60' wood boat, designed like a sardine carrier with the wheelhouse well aft. It was built in the traditional way—cedar planks on oak keel and frames, with decks of white pine.

Raynes took off most of two years to build the boat. He started it by building the stem and keel in the cellar of his house, and left it to go fishing. After steam bending and fitting the frames, “we got serious,” he said. He sold the Ruth and Mary and put the money into the new boat.

In the same way fishermen through the centuries have built boats in their own dooryards, Raynes’ building schedule unfolded en route. After the frames were in he got a hand from an old builder whom he hired one afternoon while bringing his traps ashore.

Basil Burns of Friendship planked the hull and decks. Another helper, Myron Benner, was a caulker’s caulker, and between these two, the other helpers (which included Raynes’ wife, son, daughters, and friends) could barely keep up. Raynes’ daughter, Dawn, drove the hundreds of bungs that cover the screw heads.

The boat had a fo’c’sle for the crew, a fish hold, a good-sized wheelhouse aft, an 871 GM and a 48" wheel. After thousands of wood cuts, tens of thousands of fasteners tightened down, hundreds of yards of cotton caulk driven home and dozens of gallons of paint spread, the boat was brought to the waters edge and launched in 1976. The Irene and Alton was still out there dragging 40 miles off Matinicus Rock late this February while Raynes told his story and looked out across Penobscot Bay through arced windows in his wheelhouseshaped dining room in Owls Head.

After working other fisheries, Raynes wanted to take the Irene and Alton sword fishing. No fishery is more of a hunt than harpooning swordfish. Not only are swordfish hunted by reading a wide range of signs and sea conditions, but also the swordfish presents a very real danger through retaliation with its sword. In a life and death struggle, harpooned swordfish can rush up from the depths and plunge their fourfoot sword through the wooden hull at the other end of the line. In the days when dories were put over the side to retrieve the high-flyer buoys marking the end of harpoon lines, so many of the hulls were pierced that fishermen stood up on the seat riser when hauling in the line to avoid a sword driven through the bottom. Some fishermen attached a metal plate in bottom of the smaller boats as armor.

Raynes had never fished sword with harpoon, but in 1979 he contacted fishermen he met while scalloping off Nantucket who had. They showed him how to rig his boat and use the harpoon.

The hold was set up with pens to keep the iced down fish.

“If I was going to be sword fishing I was going to be the one to throw the harpoon,” Raynes recalled.

As the striker, he did throw the harpoon and he found he got more than he bargained for in the arrangement. His first swordfish was big. He remembers the day vividly, coming up on the fish, leaning out over the pulpit, crewmen in the mast shouting directions. He recalled cradling the wood shaft in one hand with his other palm over the end of the shaft, waiting. The point was just above the swordfish and the water’s surface. He suddenly pushed the shaft with his palm, drove the point through the fish, buttonholed it, locked the point on the other side and secured it.

Raynes would do this again many times, and, while missing with the harpoon could bring rejection from the pumped-up crew, it was just part of the trip for him.

The excitement of the trip and the hunt—for him and the crew— became something he said he couldn’t explain. He likened it to what deer hunting could be for some people—where the “hunt” takes over and becomes the driving force. He and the crew got wrapped up in it and the momentum grew as the trip progressed.

Every trip began by loading food, water fuel and the hold half full of ice. Raynes sailed using the positions his father had written for all the areas they fished before electronics. Homeward bound, for example, through fog as thick as concrete, he may run 25 minutes, NNW at full power, then 40 minutes NW at full power, 2 hours NNE at full power, etc., toss the anchor in the dark and gaff the skiff’s painter. The map out and back was the compass, engine, tides and currents in his family’s beaten path to the fishing grounds.

They would head out to the interface of the warm Gulf Stream water with the cold water of the Gulf of Maine. Here the swordfish bask in the warmth of the stream and then dive into the cold water after feed fish.

The sword fisherman looks for places where the warm water on the top of the bank falls over the edge into deeper cold water. Various traces of feed fish, water temperature changes, and fish oil on the surface are a few of the markers for the presence of sword.

The captain runs these data streams through his head in varied configurations in deciding where they will fish. A typical day started with Raynes up first, checking water temperature, hauling anchor, starting the engine and waking the crew and cook. He would then head up into the mast while the others woke up. After breakfast the long summer day of the hunt began.

The crew of four or five on the Irene and Alton would be up in the masthead, standing on crosstrees—narrow boards attached to the mast—and within hoops that kept them from being flung by the yaw of the mast as the hull rolled. They spent three or four hours at a time in the crosstrees spotting for sword. The anticipation would grow and fatigue would creep in. Without fish there is no financial payoff in the shares system. Without fish there is no motivation for the hunt.

It may have been hours or days of watching without a sighting. When a fish was spotted, “fish” was cried out and the adrenaline rushed. The spotters in the mast would be “hooting and hollering,” according to Raynes. The striker ran out to the pulpit off the bow and readied the harpoon, waiting for what he may not see. Spotters on the Irene and Alton steered the boat with ropes and pulleys rigged to the topmast and shouted directions to the pulpit.

The anticipation after the long wait was focused on the brief appearance of the swordfish just beyond the bow of the boat. The striker couldn’t see what the spotter saw in the mast until the boat was almost right over the fish. Glare, turbulence, the position of the fish or its depth could all make for less than perfect conditions to strike. When a striker harpooned a swordfish, a line was let out with a high flyer, a floating marker, and preparations were made for the next strike. Later in the day the high flyers were gathered and the fish were hauled aboard.

Food and fuel supplies determined a trip’s duration—not weather, the catch or government regulations. When the crew ran out of food, they headed in before they ran out of fuel. Raynes recalled that on one lackluster trip they came across a lot of sword at the northern edge of George’s. But the crew’s empty stomachs and nearly empty fuel tanks squelched their enthusiasm.

Swordfish was the most valuable fish of the time, two to three times the value of tuna, recalled Raynes. Some customers wanted the last-caught big sword. They had restaurants on the water and he sailed right to one of them to deliver the fish.

Raynes went sword fishing until the mid 80’s until “it got so that it just didn’t pay,” he said.

The reduction in the stocks from long liners, the failure of international policy on highly migratory species and the settlement of the U.S / Canadian border across the Gulf of Maine changed things. This was a remnant of the English – French, 17th century border dispute.

“The U.S. didn’t want to work it out with Canada,” Raynes said.

An international court of arbitration at The Hague in Amsterdam made the decision instead. The Hague Line, which went out across the northeast side of Georges Bank and cut off access to the best sword fishing grounds at the Northeast Peak, was the result for U.S. fishermen.

The Irene and Alton went dragging until Raynes came ashore in 1995. Since then, the boat he and his family built has continued to fish in the Gulf of Maine. Brad Hall, with whom Raynes fished with for many years, now captains the Irene and Alton, though Raynes still owns it.

Raynes will always remember the excitement of those sword trips aboard the boat his father designed and his family built. He will likely be remembered by many as the last of the harpoon fishermen of the Gulf of Maine.

Paul Molyneaux fished with Bernard Raynes. He wrote a book about fishing with Bernard, his days aboard the Irene and Alton and commercial fishing in America. The Doryman’s Reflection: A Fisherman’s Life.