The Halibut Fisheries on East and West Coasts
HALIBUT FISHING / THE FOG WARNING,
1885 -- Winslow Homer, Prout's Neck Maine.
Winslow Homer's famous painting is on the dust jacket of a recent "ocean biography" -- The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail by W Jeffrey Bolster, Harvard University Press, 2012. Bolster describes the milennium-long history of fishing the Atlantic, starting with the Vikings of the Middle Ages. Now in the 21st century, there's mortal danger on the horizon, as the Winslow Homer painting suggests. A solitary fisherman, in a dory with two sets of oarlocks, has heard the warning bell from his mothership. He must pull to reach safety before the fog overtakes them both. This book argues that the seas of the earth are not forever, are not "immortal."
One of his examples is the east coast halibut fishery: "the same number of men, with the same gear, fishing in the same place, had been catching fewer fish as time passed—an indicator that stocks were diminishing."
Another recent ocean history is Simon Winchester's 2011 Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean. It starts with techtonic origins, and treats fishing as only one of many aspects of the Atlantic Ocean.
One of his examples is the east coast halibut fishery: "the same number of men, with the same gear, fishing in the same place, had been catching fewer fish as time passed—an indicator that stocks were diminishing."
Another recent ocean history is Simon Winchester's 2011 Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean. It starts with techtonic origins, and treats fishing as only one of many aspects of the Atlantic Ocean.
North Pacific Halibut Grounds
The Oscar and Hattie was a two-masted east coast schooner built in Swampscott, Maine, for the halibut fishery of the Atlantic. But in 1887, after both the price and availability of halibut persistently declined, the owners sent her down the Atlantic coast on an eight-month journey to test the halibut grounds off the west coast of Canada.
Sailing ever southward, she cleared the Florida coast, crossed the equator, continued south for weeks and months, then rounded Cape Horn and began the northward journey. Up the west coast of South America, she crossed the equator again, then finally arrived at Cape Flattery on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula in the spring of 1888. She made Port Townsend her home port.
Sadly, after the long voyage around the Horn-- and like other schooners that arrived on the northwest coast at that early time to fish halibut, the Oscar and Hattie was an economic failure: sails alone didn`t confer enough speed or maneuverability. So the halibut catches were insufficient to establish a commercial fishery, despite some respectable totals. The photo below shows the large, unhappy crew of the Oscar and Hattie and their small halibut catch on the dock at Tacoma, Washington in 1888, not long after their voyage around the Horn from New England.
Sailing ever southward, she cleared the Florida coast, crossed the equator, continued south for weeks and months, then rounded Cape Horn and began the northward journey. Up the west coast of South America, she crossed the equator again, then finally arrived at Cape Flattery on Washington state's Olympic Peninsula in the spring of 1888. She made Port Townsend her home port.
Sadly, after the long voyage around the Horn-- and like other schooners that arrived on the northwest coast at that early time to fish halibut, the Oscar and Hattie was an economic failure: sails alone didn`t confer enough speed or maneuverability. So the halibut catches were insufficient to establish a commercial fishery, despite some respectable totals. The photo below shows the large, unhappy crew of the Oscar and Hattie and their small halibut catch on the dock at Tacoma, Washington in 1888, not long after their voyage around the Horn from New England.
The Crew of the Oscar and Hattie, unloading halibut at Tacoma, 1888. They do not look happy. Photo: EW Wright, from Freeman, p 24.
Two decades after the Oscar and Hattie, the Chief Skugaid--with a gasoline, then a diesel engine-- and her crew were more successful. But like all halibutters, they endured heaving seas and lashing wind, rain, snow, and ice of the BC and Alaska coasts, the Aleutian Islands, and the Bering Sea.
ABOVE: Range of the Pacific Halibut. LOWER LEFT: Hokkaido Island, Japan.CENTRE: Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea. LOWER RIGHT: Vancouver Island. Source: Halibut Association of North America.
ABOVE: Where the CHIEF SKUGAID sailed for Pacific Halibut. At RIGHT: the islands of Haida Gwaii (no label), BC, Canada. Halibut occur south along that coast for 2000 miles down to California. LEFT: Halibut also occur south along the Russian coast for 2000 miles down to Japan's Hokkaido Island.-- From the website of the Halibut Association of North America.
BELOW: Detail, Gulf of Alaska.
ABOVE: Details of the Alaska panhandle, USA, where it meets the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Lower Right: a roughly triangular portion of Haida Gwaii islands (no label), BC. Also Dixon Entrance, site of a boundary dispute (qv) between the US and Canada.
This map is from a memoir, "Halibut Schooner," by Lyman R. Elsworth, Van Rees Press, New York, 1953.
Iced-over schooner in Prince Rupert, circa 1910. International Pacific Halibut Commission Report, pub 1930. And below, from p.82 of the memoir cited above, is what it's like when a ship ices up, "Early in the morning a bitter wind began to blow ice crystals from the wave crests. This was the salt spray, freezing in mid-air; soon you could hear it tinkling in crystal showers... I got on deck first... In three seconds my jacket and face were covered with frozen spray. The gunnel was coated now with inches of solid ice. It was as thick underfoot... The vessel was rolling and pitching, a fantastic ice object lurching along in the water. ...I struck hard, driving the [ax] blade in, then twisted the handle... Chunks of ice started free, but the sea washing over the side froze them together in seconds. I chopped like a madman."
Based in Prince Rupert, BC, Chief Skugaid had been built in Vancouver in 1913 as an 86-foot, 80 ton halibut schooner.
Here's the Chief Skugaid iced-up in the 1950's-- off Sand Point, Alaska. Photo taken from a vessel alongside.
Photo courtesy of Richard Gulbransen, Chief Skugaid crewman.
Her sails were supplemented first with a 4-cylinder, 7.5" stroke gasoline engine, and later with a diesel engine.
Circa 1930, a halibut schooner on the north coast of British Columbia. The staysail is up to improve stability. --International Pacific Halibut Commission, 1930
Her first owner was the Canadian Fish & Cold Storage Co Ltd of Prince Rupert, BC.
Richmond, BC Archives.
Original caption: "Fishing vessel Chief Skugaid on the Queen Charlotte Banks - 1915." (Queen Charlotte Islands are now Haida Gwaii.) Click to enlarge.
This sequence of three photos shows the Chief in 1915. She is shown at first approaching, then opposite the camera, then moving away.
Second photo, below: captain and crew have gathered for an informal 'sail-past' photo. The captain leans from the wheelhouse window, and ten crew members gather on the portside.
All wear hats... except two square-jawed young men who stand at the gunnel, facing the camera. One of these hatless young men is likely crewman M.C. Chetwynd from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia. According to newspaper accounts from 1915, he and his dory-mate would be lost at sea later in the voyage. See website of Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial, Joseph T. Chetwynd.
This sequence of three photos shows the Chief in 1915. She is shown at first approaching, then opposite the camera, then moving away.
Second photo, below: captain and crew have gathered for an informal 'sail-past' photo. The captain leans from the wheelhouse window, and ten crew members gather on the portside.
All wear hats... except two square-jawed young men who stand at the gunnel, facing the camera. One of these hatless young men is likely crewman M.C. Chetwynd from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia. According to newspaper accounts from 1915, he and his dory-mate would be lost at sea later in the voyage. See website of Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial, Joseph T. Chetwynd.
From "Fishing: British Columbia's Commercial Fishing History," Forester and Forester. Hancock House, Saanichton, BC. 1975. Courtesy Royal BC Museum, BC Archives.
Behind the two young men, three of the crew take their ease on a stack of nested dories on the afterdeck, davit lines secured.
Richmond, BC Archives
After passing the camera, the "Chief Skugaid Vancouver BC" continues north to Prince Rupert and the halibut grounds. Her schooner sails are wrapped around each mast, the stay-sail in between.
Below, a photo that appears to be from the same 1915 series, taken aboard the Chief. Like the others, also from the Richmond Archives.
Click to enlarge.
Below, a photo that appears to be from the same 1915 series, taken aboard the Chief. Like the others, also from the Richmond Archives.
Click to enlarge.
Original caption: "Captain Selig watching the dories aboard the Chief Skugaid." Photo is apparently part of the same 1915 sequence.
Wheelhouse details appear the same as in previous photos.
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