Kodiak itself reminded him of a small Scandinavian town, with a layout facing the sea and its main waterway framed by hilly islands and a mountain. But there the similarity to the old country ended. Back home, even structures in the smallest communities had years and years of history. One dared not alter them without a lengthy period of consideration. Here the buildings were raw. Tear down one and another could take its place without concern. Yes, raw. Invigorating! Swede liked Kodiak at once.
Next morning he climbed the stairs in a weathered frame building to reach the office of the lawyer with whom he was to check in. The man waved him in past the secretary’s desk, instead of leaving him to wait as Swede would have done. Held out a hand and shook Swede’s warmly with, “Hi! Been expecting you. Grab a chair. Coffee?”
It appeared that the large vessel that had been outfitted to catch and process king crabs seldom docked in Kodiak, since it could refuel at small cannery towns closer to its fishing grounds. Its finished product could be stored and shipped from these places also.
“Weather’s suddenly turned shitty otherwise you could charter a plane to Sand Point. These fronts can last a while.” The lawyer continued conversationally. “Tell you what. I know a skipper who’s out here prospecting for these king crabs. Owes me a small favor. This guy’s scratchy, but if he’ll take you, want to ride out with him a couple of days?”
So it was in America. Anyone could do anything. Swede nodded. “Good, yes, thank you.”
“Might be rough out there. What kind of sea legs you got?”
“Legs?”
“Small boat. Bad weather.” To Swede, it made the proposition even more interesting.
“I’ve endured bad weather, sir. No problem.”
Soon after, dressed in newly purchased oilskins to guard against the rain that continued to drive down, Swede climbed aboard the wooden fishing vessel named Kodiak Star. Behind him, a familiar voice growled out, “What the fuck?” There, staring him down, was the leathery, scowling face of Jones Henry.
Swede Scorden had, as management, not expected to work as a fisherman again. Certainly in Sweden or Norway he’d never have done so as a fish plant owner. Nor, he’d thought, in Alaska anymore, even though when visiting Ballard relatives as a kid, he’d once crewed aboard their Puget Sound seiner. And of course, after the war, he’d crewed for Cousin Nels out of Ketchikan. But after all, Swede mused, it wasn’t an unreal expectation. He had just headed an entire operation in Bristol Bay with some hundred and forty workers at his command and scores of fishing boats in his possession.
But here he stood idly aboard the small trawler while the three crewmen worked hard. And one of them at that was the man Jones Henry, who just days before in Bristol Bay had been dependent on conditions decided by Swede Scorden himself.
By the second trawl-load the next morning, Swede was on deck assisting where he could. In truth, the huge, trapped crabs they called kings were far too interesting to only be watched from a hatchway. After all, they were why he had come. He helped pull the net aboard. Then he assisted the others as they lifted the crabs by their massive legs to store them in the hold. Sluggish creatures, heavy. Soon he was handling lines, even jumping with the others to orders barked from the rough skipper named Hoss. Shining with sweat from the work, Swede was enjoying himself. This was America.
“So,” growled Jones Henry as they rested behind the winch under shelter from the rain. “Ever go back to Creek Street?”
“Jones, I am married!”
“So am I.” Jones laughed in his way that seemed half sardonic. “To a fine girl.” He rummaged under his jacket, produced a single cigarette, and lit it after striking a damp match several times. After taking a deep puff to get it going, he offered it over to Swede. “Only one in my pocket. Here, share it.” Swede felt the generosity of the gesture, but: “Is this sanitary, Jones?”
“Suit yourself.”
Swede quickly accepted the cigarette, drew on it until his mouth filled uncomfortably with smoke, then passed it back.
“So. What’s a cannery boss coming to Kodiak for? And out on a boat like this? Them big crabs I’d guess. Or did they fire you?”
“Big crabs. Yes.” Swede decided there was no secret to it, at least not with one of his fisherman. “When the sky clears . . .” Now, as always when he thought of it, Swede paused a moment to put his words together into proper English syntax. “. . . I’m going to fly and visit a ship out west that’s famously catching and processing these crabs. I’m aboard here only because the weather’s too bad for flying.”
“Wouldn’t mind seeing that myself. If I didn’t have to settle things here and then get home.” Jones took a drag of the cigarette. Drops of rain blowing in on an angle had put it out. He muttered without heat and tossed it into the water.
“Hey out there,” called Hoss from the cabin doorway. “Don’t hurt to rub a little soogie powder on the cabinets in here while we’re dragging and nothing to do on deck.”
“Then do it your damn self!” snapped Jones and added in sudden humor, “Marine.”
“Might just do that,” said Hoss in equal humor, and slid the hatch door shut.
“Man needs setting straight every minute of the year,” Jones muttered. “Fact is, I’m tired of taking his shit now that I’ve seen the big crabs. Early season yet, but I see the future. Skipper Hoss there says he’s soon going to put a smaller-mesh liner in his trawl, then go out to a bay here called Kaluda or something. They say shrimp are packing in there like sawdust. Can’t keep the man still. I understand that. Try everything. Out here’s hopping with opportunity. But with the Chinook salmon starting to run back in Ketchikan, that’s where I belong for rest of this season. Mebbe pat Adele on the head a little bit . . .” He considered, with elbows on his knees, looking out at waves turning dark in late afternoon light. “Still. Wouldn’t mind seeing how they handle them big crabs when they keep coming. They say that Bering Sea’s something to fish in, times.”
The interval gave Swede time to consider. Why not? The chartered plane would be paid for. It would probably lay over at least to refuel before returning, time for Jones to have a look. Swede, having chartered the plane himself, could insist on further delay. And if anyone at the company objected, he’d insist that he’d brought this experienced fisherman along for his opinions. In Alaska the rules were flexible. And didn’t he owe Jones Henry something for their friendship so long ago?
“Come see, Jones. As a guest of the company that pays for the plane. A quick look at this processor vessel before you return to Ketchikan.”
Jones thought it over. “Paid for?” Swede nodded. “No strings attached?” Swede enjoyed the fact that he understood this idiom. “No strings, as they say.”
“Guess you are a big shot now. Well, I’ve come this far. Wouldn’t hurt to see it all before committing out here.”
At 140 feet in length, the ship named Deep Sea was a giant among the fishing boats a quarter of its size—at most. They were moored to the cannery pier by the remote village of Sand Point. The sea plane that had carried Swede and Jones floated in to an end of the same pier. The pilot, wearing hip boots, walked out on the plane’s wing to toss his line to a worker. Within moments they stood at the gangway of the ship itself.
“Got your gear?” called a man from the deck above. “Come on. We’ve hung around for you an hour since refueling, but got to go. No profit tied up here.”
“This man I’ve brought,” called Swede. “He’s only here to see what you look like. To take what you call a tour.”
“He’s welcome to look all he wants from down there. But we’re leaving.” Indeed, the ship’s propeller now churned slowly in the water, and the Native man who had received the plane’s line gripped the ship’s hawser astern ready to cast it from a bollard.
“Jones!” said Swede. “I’m sorry. You can at least see how big the ship is before you return.”
Jones barely considered. “Think they got berth for two aboard there?”
“I’ve come this far.”
“Sir!” Swede called up. “We are not one but two coming aboard to travel with you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come.”
They had barely ascended the gangway before crewmen pulled it up behind them. Within a half hour the Sand Point breakwater was a mere line on the horizon and the ship had begun to pitch through a heavy sea.
28
PIONEERS OF AMERICAN FISHING
The 140-foot vessel Deep Sea is part of Alaska’s history. It caught and processed king crab from 1947 into the 1950s when the big crustaceans—destined to form the Bering Sea’s most lucrative fishery in the following decades—were still an exotic product. Americans eventually would have discovered what a bonanza they had in these crabs, but Deep Sea pioneered the way.
Before World War II, the Japanese had harvested and canned king crab, mainly from the western Bering Sea, which their vessels dominated. Post-war, they joined the Russians fishing the crabs in the near-to-home Sea of Okhotsk to feed their hungry countrymen. In the United States, the incentive to harvest king crab came more from opportunity than out of a need for survival. Despite Americans’ concerns during the immediate post-war years about the spread of Communism from the Soviet Union and about crippling domestic labor union strikes, this was a time when the people of the Alaskan and West Coast fisheries were riding high on optimism.
During the war, an innovative American cannery man named Lowell Wakefield had led government-sponsored exploratory fishing trials in Alaskan waters to find new seafood sources. Thus, he saw what abundance the Bering Sea held. In 1946 he raised among investors—many of them back from wartime navy duty and primed for further adventure before settling down—an approximate $500,000 to build a ship that could both catch and process fish at sea in Alaskan weather of any severity.
Specs: The Deep Sea’s cost to build at the Birchfield Boiler shipyard in Tacoma, WA, came to $461,000 before equipment. Her length, as stated, was 140 feet, with a beam of nearly 27 feet. She weighed 550 tons and had a 420,000 pound freezer storage capacity. Her 10.3 foot draft deepened by some 2.2 feet when fully loaded. The engine was a GM two-cycle V-type diesel delivering 750 rpm and 1,200 horsepower. Cruising speed could reach over thirteen knots but averaged twelve knots, with a range of four thousand nautical miles before refueling. Belowdecks there were eleven staterooms to accommodate twenty-seven crew and four officers. The processing area included continuous production lines. Quick freezing equipment could take 1,200 pounds per hour in 15-pound blocks to a temperature of -25 degrees Fahrenheit.
Electronics on the bridge included the latest devices developed during wartime, such as radar, radio direction finders that could home in on buoys set earlier, and fathometers, while by 1950 loran (Long Range Navigation) was added after the Coast Guard had established reliable stations for this system in Alaska. A ship’s intercom connected stations throughout the ship that could both receive and send.
By the summer of 1947 the ship had traveled from its Seattle shipyard to the Bering Sea, stopping in Ketchikan and Kodiak along the way to fuel and pick up final members of the crew. She carried a crew complement divided mostly between Alaskan Natives working in processing (Wakefield wanted this to be an Alaska venture wherever practical) and on deck, many of Scandinavian origin who had been signed on for their experience. At various times the investors themselves were also aboard. These were men still young and restless from wartime experience. They had shelled out their money partly for the adventure. Most were also well educated and had some means, recruited through contacts rather than through advertisements. When they weren’t running things—sometimes the levels of shipboard authority became mixed and informal—they turned-to as crew. With twelve-hour shifts of cold and wet manual labor, and with the ship often rocked above deck by crashing waves, ice, and storms and below by brutally shifting platforms, the Deep Sea was a lively place to be for men who accepted hardship as part of the adventure.
The initial targets were sole, flounder, and other bottomfish. King crab was considered to be an ancillary catch. Then, Deep Sea’s drag net began to come up with as much big crab as bottomfish. The crabs had meat in them of a quality that would make them a luxury item in the United States. The trick was to preserve that meat in both attractive form and commercial quantity. This became the Deep Sea’s challenge.
Grabbing opportunity in hand, Wakefield and his associates experimented and developed an efficient way to flash-freeze the crab meat so that its taste and texture remained fresh. They led the way in proving that the huge king crabs of the North Pacific, previously harvested and canned only by Japanese and Soviet interests in the western Bering Sea, were a viable commercial product for the United States and its markets. In its first half-dozen years, the company Wakefield formed barely broke even—as is often the history of pioneering ventures. Eventually markets caught up with production and the venture prospered and was soon copied.
In time, Kodiak, as the location closest to the lower United States and abundant with king crab, became a boom town. It proclaimed itself, with reason, “The King Crab Capital of the World.” But this mad success didn’t happen until a few years after the still-early days in which Jones Henry, Swede Scorden, and Kiyoshi Tsurifune played their parts.
29
ABOARD THE VESSEL Deep Sea
Jones and Swede dropped their gear on deck and watched the shoreline recede. The man who had authorized their boarding had already left. Finally a passing man in coveralls said, “Get yourselves coffee, fellows. Galley’s aft down that ladder. Watch the puke. Throw your bags to the bridge till we’ve squared away.”
In the corridor below deck that led to the galley, they stepped around a brown swatch of vomit that gelled back and forth with the ship’s roll, then made way for a man with mop and pail who muttered: “Shouldn’t’ve let nobody ashore here, these dog-holes.”
The messdeck was bright and clean. It had tables that sat a half-dozen each. Three men in rumpled dungarees slumped at one table with their heads in their arms. At other tables, sitting quietly apart from each other, were groups of Natives and a handful of whites.
Swede led the way to the coffee urn and filled himself a mug. He looked around at the men at ease and headed to the table where some Native workers sat. Behind him, Jones paused before following reluctantly.
“Good afternoon,” said Swede. “Okay that we sit here?”
“Sure.” One of the men nudged a chair out with his foot. Jones glanced at the table where the white men were resting, but he drew a place alongside Swede’s.
“Long time at sea here, yes?” Swede ventured.
The man who had offered the chair chuckled. “Don’t seem that long, till we come to land. Come to take fuel.” His brown face was wide without being fat, his expression deliberate. He gestured over toward the three slumped men. “Then, booze. You see what happens. Guys there, they won’t be no good for two days. Well. Then everybody’s all right again. For another month. Till we come take fuel again at some other place that sells booze.”
“Always like that,” said Swede easily. “Everywhere.” The others nodded agreement.
Another of the men volunteered, “Vladimir here, he’s assistant village chief, sort of. Makes us stay away from booze when we come in some place for oil. Most of us. Makes sure we do right. Do our jobs so they keep hiring us. When there’s a problem, it’s Vladimir decides who’s right, who’s wrong.”
“No fun,” said another. “But we keep our money.” The man named Vladimir shrugged, clearly pleased.
“Now and then,” the first continued, “Maybe every three months, we stop at Akutan where most of us live. Then we sure have fun. Don’t go back to work for a couple of days. Then everybody’s okay.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Swede laughed with them, then stretched, clearly relaxed. “On the processing lines, is it more fish or more crab that you work?”<
br />
“Crab, now. Since the boat’s found the crab.” Before they had finished their coffee, the men had described to Swede the steps they took to butcher the crab and to either extract the meat from its legs or to freeze and pack the legs with crab meat still inside.
Jones listened, amused in spite of himself. Sharp fellow, that Swede. By the time somebody came to say they’d better check up at the bridge and find where they should bunk, Swede had learned enough about processing the king crab to write his own book on the subject.
Swede, who had been expected—invited even—had a bunk with sheets waiting for him in one of the staterooms that slept officers and visiting shareholders. To make room for Jones they needed to clear cartons of soft drinks and engine oil from a top bunk in a cabin used for storage. Somebody found him a blanket.
For a while, Jones trailed behind Swede, conscious that he was no more than an unexpected annoyance forced on those who ran the ship. But his ambivalent position left him strangely at leisure. As a mere passenger assigned no real responsibility, he was free to wander where he pleased. In fact, everyone was so busy that no one challenged him.
The wheelhouse itself was so vast that they called it “the bridge.” It resembled those on the navy troopships that had once taken him and fellow marines to islands for battle. He’d never been authorized to enter on those ships, but had occasionally snuck a look anyway. Here, he visited if he pleased. But he found this wheelhouse to be particularly alien territory. It was so far removed from that of his own boat, where the chow table practically bumped the steering wheel, that it appeared to be a whole other world. The electronic gadgets everywhere looked like a trade show display. He didn’t even know what some of them were, or what the glowing green images on their screens meant. Fathometer, of course. And he knew of radar and radio direction finders from wartime, although he’d never needed them nor even been able to afford them on his troller. And what of this newfangled loran, with its need to adjust two wavy electronic lines called “slave” and “master,” to get some kind of position?
WARRIORS Page 31
