Fisherman Laurence Newman:

“Snow, Fog, Whatever, We Went Out and Set the Trawls”, Part II

by Laurie Schreiber

Laurence and Jarvis out fishing. Courtesy Newman Marine.

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – The Southwest Harbor Public Library has a nice trove of oral history cassette tapes recorded under library auspices in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.

One of these voices is Southwest Harbor fisherman Laurence Newman, recorded in 1993, with asides by his wife Eleanor. He describes a bygone day of fishing off midcoast Maine, here transcribed, spliced for narrative flow, occasionally synopsized, and interspersed with explanatory information from other sources.

Laurence next went to study electrical engineering at MIT. He worked through the Great Depression for the Southern New England Telephone Company in New Haven, Conn. In his late 30s, Laurence was diagnosed with diabetes and was warned the disease would eventually kill him.

Because of the diabetes, he says, he had to keep active. He also missed Southwest Harbor and fishing. In 1946, he was ready to move back.

“I wanted to be my own boss,” he said. “I said, ‘If someone else can make a living lobster fishing, I can, too. And I’ll work harder.’”

Laurence and Eleanor moved their family into an early 19th century home overlooking a coastal passage called the Western Way. His father Lyle had retired, but Laurence persuaded him to partner up and form L.D. Newman & Son, a lobster-buying and fishing business. (Lyle was on the water until his late 80s; he died at age 98, in 1974. Laurence, who expected to die young because of the diabetes, passed away in 2002 at age 96. Eleanor died in 2006, four days shy of her 97th birthday.)

It was difficult getting back in the game as a lobsterman. The fishery is territorial and some resented his return. That first spring, someone cut some of his traps. He retaliated in kind, but only once. Then he stumbled on a point of negotiation: A local dealer wanted to return a truck his son had bought from Laurence.

“I said if you want me to do that I will but also I want you to use a little persuasion on some of your fishermen to quit bothering my traps,” Laurence wrote in a letter to his granddaughter a year before he died. “I think that was the end of my problems.”

In 1945, he says, he could catch any amount of pollock. It sold for two cents a pound. Codfish went for a cent and a half a pound for the small ones, two cents for medium-size, and maybe two and a half cents for the big ones. He’d get four cents a pound for haddock. He could fill up the boat with 5,000 pounds of pollock.

“If you made a hundred dollars a day, that was a lot of money then.”

But pollock didn’t always sell immediately.

“When they wouldn’t buy it, I caught them anyway and salted them. I’d put them in big butts, a thousand pounds in a butt. I’d salt 40,000 pounds a summer, and keep them on my scow that I had built for lobstering. In the fall, I’d take a dory over alongside the scow, fill it full of water, put in 2,000 pounds of pollock, and let them soak all day. When I came back from lobstering that afternoon, I’d tow the dory over and leave it on the beach. When the tide went down, I’d back down the truck and haul the pollock to the house, and put it on the flakes to dry.”

While her husband went out to fish or lobster, Eleanor was responsible for turning up to 800 pounds of drying pollock on the flakes in the yard, twice a day.

Laurence: “It was hard work. They were heavy fish. She almost killed herself once. She swore off doing it.”

Eleanor: “They were just real wet. It was the beginning of their drying period. I had just gotten them all turned and it started to rain hard, and I had to turn every last one of them. My back was aching like anything and I went into the house and threw myself on the bed and cried. I said, ‘I’ll never do that again,’ and I never did.”

Laurence: “After that, my father did it. After I dried them, my father would skin and bone them down in the cellar, which was hours and hours and hours of work, then put them in cellophane packages – salt pollock or salt cod – then he’d put them in his car, take a trunkful and go to Rockland or Eastport, and go to all these little stores. They’d take a dozen packs of these salt pollock, and he’d sell them for 25 cents a package. Now they’re $5. You couldn’t make anything. You did all that work. Well, the work didn’t cost you anything and you had nothing else to do anyway, so that’s how we did it.”

That was from 1946 to about 1964 or ’65.

Laurence: “We’d sell a lot of it in 50-pound bundles to old-timers who knew what it was.”

Interviewer: “My grandfather used to call it strip fish. It was one of his favorite Sunday night snacks.”

Laurence: “Right, it was one of my father’s favorite dishes.”

Interviewer: “He’d strip the fish and have crackers and milk.”

Laurence: “Right, same thing.”

Interviewer: “And he had a special jar where he would strip it off so it was always ready to eat. He called it strip fish, I guess, because he stripped it off.”

Laurence: “When my father was selling these fish, 12 pieces, he put those in a big, gallon mayonnaise jar. He’d fill those up with those little bits and sell those at 10 cents a pound.”

Laurence and Lyle used to go halibut fishing every day in April.

Laurence on his boat. Courtesy The Southwest Harbor Public Library Collection of Photographs.

“Snowstorms, whatever, we went out and set the trawls. Left them. Next morning, went out, hauled them, baited them, and left them again, all night. One day – I used to have Stuart help me lobstering – he was home on vacation and he wanted to go with us. He went this particular day and I had a movie camera onboard. We got hauling this trawl and I knew we had a big one. I hauled up and I saw him coming and there was this 146-pound halibut laying there, and right below was another one, a twin. Got the gaff in, got them on board and Stuart got the movie of it.”

From August through November, Laurence fished 200 lobster traps inshore, around Duck Island and elsewhere, and another 50 traps off Mount Desert Rock. Lobster sold for about 30 cents per pound. Most times, he went out to the Rock, 20 miles offshore, by himself. He’d haul his traps and set a halibut trawl. One morning, he bought some alewives and baited up his trawl and set it.

“When I hauled it, there was a codfish on there with the skin stripped the length of it. About a 15-pound codfish. He’d been swallowed by a halibut, he had halibut teeth marks on his skin. So I baited the trawl again and set it back near as I could, stayed there all night. Next morning, I got a 275-pound halibut. And there I was alone. I had a halibut hook, like a meathook, with a handline. I got that in his head. I had to kill him first with a baseball bat. Then I stood on the rail, squat down, and I finally got his head far enough out of the water where I could straighten my back. I straightened my legs and I got him in the boat. He filled the whole platform. He was a big fish, about eight feet long. I had three more halibut that same day on another trawl, weighed a hundred pounds between them.”

Laurence mainly used herring for lobster bait. To catch them, he engaged in a fishing practice, now rare, called torching.

“When we’d go torching herring, we’d take the dory and a small rowboat. You’d have a dip net and a gasoline-soaked bag. You’d throw that bag in the dipnet and throw a match in it. It’d flare up, and the herring would start chasing it. The herring would go into the net, and you’d have 20 bushel of herring. Sometimes the herring would jump right aboard the boat you were rowing. That’s how we got our lobster bait. You’d be covered with herring scales when you got through.”

Laurence couldn’t sell fish on weekends, so he used to take out fishing parties.

“I took out ten people at five dollars apiece. They would come in trucks. They’d catch as much as they could take home, and they’d put it in their deep freezes. Ten could fish at once, four to each side and two over the stern.

“I’d bring people up from Connecticut and we’d go out and catch two or three thousand pounds.

“They’re all pulling those 12- or 15-pound pollock, and each thinks their fish is the biggest. Talk about excitement! They were awfully excited.”

Laurence could have lost his life at sea half a dozen times. The closest call came the night he was coming in from Mount Desert Rock in thick fog with a load of pollock. He was cleaning fish at the stern, with the tiller in rudder position, when the fog lifted just enough to reveal Bunker’s Ledge – dead ahead, maybe 50 yards distant. He lunged forward, grabbed the wheel and spun it. By a stroke of good fortune, a large roller carried his boat past the ledge.

Another time, he headed out at one in the morning.

““I used to go fishing whether it was foggy or not. I never let the fog hold me back. Foggy, you couldn’t see a thing. I just watched the compass and my depth meter. I ran my time from Manset out to Duck Island, and I stopped the boat when I figured I was there. I could hear the wash of the waves on Little Duck Island, so I knew where I was – or I thought I did. From that point, I could go right out between Little and Big Duck Island, keep on the same course I was going, and go to Mount Desert Rock. But foolishly, I turned my depth meter off – I was so sure of where I was – and opened the boat up and let go.

“The next thing I knew, I hit a rock. Bango! Dead stop. I knew immediately where I was, because I’d gone there on picnics. It was the big island, and I was farther away from the little island than I thought. If I’d have kept my depth meter on, I would have known where I was. So I struck that ledge. I thought, of course, I was going to sink. I looked overboard and there was a few feet of water under the keel. I grabbed the flashlight and went up on the bow of the boat.

“The stem was all smashed up above the waterline. I backed the boat up and I watched the inside to see if there was any water coming in. I tried the pump and stayed about ten minutes and there wasn’t any water coming in. It was the third of July and the wharf would be closed the next day, and it was the last day they’d buy fish. So I kept the trawls baited and I went out fishing. I came back and I had a good load of fish.

“I unloaded the fish, cleaned the boat up. I beached the boat, right there in Manset. The next morning, at daylight, I was up there with a piece of oak and I cut the stem out and put a new piece in, and caulked the boat, and I was all ready for business the next weekend.

“I used to go in the fog and like it because, if it wasn’t foggy, there’d be half a dozen other boats out there in the same area, setting trawls for the same fish, and frequently you’d get tangled up with one of them. If you got tangled up with another trawl, you’re licked. One boat has to haul it all in a snarl, and it’s an awful job. In the fog, I was usually alone. There wasn’t very many people who were foolhardy enough to go out in the fog.”