by Josh Harris
Phil’s job in the wheelhouse that night was to make sure the American Eagle made it safely through Unimak Pass, a section of the Bering Sea that sometimes looked like rush hour on a downtown U.S. freeway, with container ships, fishing vessels, and all sorts of craft plying the waters. The good news was, there was good visibility for Phil’s first watch after dark.
“It was crystal clear that night,” Joe recalled. “Flat calm. All Phil had to do was drive straight and avoid traffic.”
Joe didn’t feel fully comfortable leaving Phil, who was still only twenty, up there alone. Nevertheless, Joe went down to his bunk to grab a few hours of sleep. He couldn’t turn off his mind, though. He kept thinking about what could go wrong in the wheelhouse.
Finally, his concerns overwhelmed his tiredness. “I come upstairs,” Joe said, “walk into the wheelhouse, and there is Phil, sitting in the captain’s chair with his hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head. He was slouched down so low, I couldn’t even say for sure that there was anybody in the chair.
“When I spun the chair around, there was Phil, dead asleep.”
What really sent a shiver through Joe was what he saw behind him in the boat’s wake.
“We had just come through a fleet of about fifteen big trawlers that were now about three or four miles behind us,” Joe said. “He had not even altered course.
“I thought, Oh my God, are you kidding me?”
Joe exploded. Phil awakened to the sounds of his infuriated boss yelling in his ear, telling him in very clear, descriptive language that he had endangered the lives of every crew member.
“I tried him, but it didn’t work out,” said Joe. “It could have been disastrous, but at least he learned his lesson.
“Still, I never gave him that watch again, never put him in the wheelhouse in Unimak Pass.”
CHAPTER 3
DRINKIN’, DRUGGIN’, RIDIN’
My dad once told me that when he was a young crab fisherman, he’d get a big, fat paycheck, buy huge amounts of cocaine, stash it all in a shoe box, rent the penthouse of a nice hotel, and rotate the girls in and out. That’s how he lived his life for a long time. He’d get a check for $80,000, but, after three weeks, it was gone. That’s what crab fishermen did in those days. There was no shame to the game.
—Josh
Whether he was out in the precarious Bering Sea or back in the familiar surroundings of Bothell, Phil Harris was never far from a party. And most of the time, it was his party.
His wild days and nights, both in Dutch Harbor and on the back roads of Bothell, are legendary. “When we came in with a load of crab to the cannery,” said Joe Wabey, Phil’s first captain, “it would take two days to off-load it. That gave us two days to drink, party, sleep, and party some more while also getting in a few boat chores.
“Phil was a colorful guy, huge when it came to partying back when he was one of my crew members, but he sure had the ugliest girlfriends I’ve ever seen. He would hook up with the cannery girls—I guess we all did in those days—but his girls were distinctive. There was one we called Fish Face because her eyes were out to the side of her head and she was kind of grey in color. He had another one that looked like the old greasy-haired rocker, Patti Smith, but she was really nice, the nicest of the group.”
Phil fit right in with the wild bunch that walked the streets, caroused in the bars, and worked the docks of Dutch Harbor, a port within the city limits of Unalaska, population 4,376. Dutch Harbor is a focal point for commercial fishermen, seafood processors, and all sorts of boat operators.
Vessels badly damaged by the ravages of the Bering Sea usually wind up in that harbor, designated a port of refuge by both the state and federal governments.
Thousands of ships enter Dutch Harbor brimming with fish that is soon shipped all over the world, reaching markets in North America, Europe, and the Far East. For the last twenty-two years, Dutch Harbor has led the nation in seafood exports, handling almost 1 million tons of seafood annually.
Just getting there is an adventure. Fishing in the Bering Sea is like a dip in a wading pool compared to the danger of landing at Dutch Harbor Airport. It’s like trying to touch down on a large life raft, the uninviting waters of the sea waiting on either end of the runway for any plane that misses its target. Compounding the problem are sometimes-ferocious winds and the ever-unpredictable storms.
When first-time visitors ask if they can fly out on a specific day, they are told, “Nobody can be certain of leaving Dutch Harbor when they want. They leave when they can.”
Danger has long haunted this town. A century ago, an epidemic of Spanish flu decimated the population. In 1942 in the midst of World War II, Dutch Harbor, site of a U.S. naval air station and army barracks, was bombed by twenty-five Japanese fighter planes in a two-day battle that left forty-three American servicemen dead, and a ship, oil tanks, barracks, and warehouses damaged or destroyed.
Today, bald eagles, drunks, and a vampire are the biggest threats to the population. The vampire was a local who, according to the Los Angeles Times, was found with blood all over him, wandering around town on his bike, claiming his ex-girlfriend had turned him into a bloodsucker.
The Unisea bar, advertised as the spot “Where Fish and Drink Become One,” is packed with crazy characters looking for a few hours of relief after weeks at sea. On any given night, many in there look like a cross between Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver.
And right in the middle of it for thirty-five years was Phil, his gravelly voice, bleary-eyed look, and distinctively tattooed arms standing out even in that crowd.
“He was definitely rough around the edges,” said Keith Colburn, captain of the Wizard. “There were guys in the fleet who were straitlaced and operated by the book. They were superprofessional mariners. You’d never see those guys in a bar. They were there for a reason, and that reason was business.
“Phil knew how to mix business with pleasure. He understood that sometimes you’ve got to have a good time to handle what you are going to be dealing with. He’d be in the bars throwing the drinks back, trying to stay loose because he knew, once he got ready to leave the harbor, he was going to be an absolute nervous wreck. Once he left the dock, the fun time stopped.
“Going into a crab season, you are about as tense as you can get. It’s like a game seven of the NBA playoffs. You’ve got maybe four days to fish and, if you fuck up, you are going to be screwed. But, if you land on the crab, you are going to be a hero.”
To Colburn, Phil was a hero. “There were hooligans and bums in the fleet,” he said, “even pirates and crooks. Phil was nowhere near those guys. He was a class act.”
Sig Hansen, captain of the Northwestern, said Phil took a unique approach to the pursuit of happiness from the moment his boat docked in Dutch Harbor. “For the rest of us, the routine was standard,” Hansen said. “You live on your boat, you go out and party, and then you come back to your boat.
“Not Phil. He’d get a room at a hotel on shore. He had that style, that coolness. He’d say, ‘I don’t want to have to worry about crawling back to the boat if I’ve had too much to drink. I’ll crawl back to my room.’ ”
Hansen thought it was such a great idea that he started to get a room for himself when coming into Dutch Harbor. “I didn’t do it in the beginning because I’m too damn cheap,” Hansen conceded, “and I thought it made you look like you were just trying to be a big shot.
“But I came to realize that Phil was right. So you spend a hundred dollars for the night if you’re going to go out and act goofy, and then you don’t have to worry about getting back to the dock. You just have to get to your hotel bed. That’s more civilized.”
While the comforts of a soft bed might still be appealing, having a private party headquarters is no longer as practical.
“It’s all different now,” said Joe. “It only takes about eighteen hours to off-load and you’re back out again, so that has cut way down on the partying.”
• • •
There was no such thing as cutting down on the partying when Phil would return to Bothell after a fishing trip.
“When Phil came home,” said his longtime friend Jeff Sheets, “he’d call me immediately. It was usually about four in the morning. I’d pick up the phone and I’d hear the voice on the other end say, ‘Get over here. I’m back.’ My wife would chew me out as I got dressed because she knew I wasn’t going to work that day.
“By the time I got over to Phil’s place, he had already gotten a quarter ounce of coke and a couple of bottles of Stoli vodka.”
Joe Duvey, another Bothell friend, said the routine was always the same throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s: “Drinkin’, druggin’, and ridin’ bikes. That was about it.”
Once he became established as a crab boat captain, Phil had plenty of money to spend on toys. For him, the toys consisted of Corvettes, Harleys, and a Porsche, his wild rides in the driver’s seat fueled by drugs and alcohol. It was never boring when Phil was in town. “Total chaos was more like it,” Joe said. Sit around with the Bothell gang today and the tales from the old days never seem to end.
“One night,” Joe said, “Phil was riding one of his bikes, the beautiful, supercustom one. Hauling ass with a couple of other guys, he went off the road.”
Phil went flying into some bushes, winding up scratched and bruised. But where was his motorcycle? Lying flat on his back, Phil spotted it.
Directly overhead. It had soared twenty feet into the air and come to rest upside down in a tree.
“The guys he was with came back and helped him drag the bike down,” Joe said, “but one wheel was bent.”
Phil tried to straighten it out by bashing it with a tree branch. But when he got back on the bike and attempted to ride it, the cycle weaved all over the road, that wheel far from functional.
“Many of his evenings were like that,” Joe said. “They would start out all right and then he would do something crazy.”
Jeff remembered another disastrous outing with that same bike: “Phil was coming down the hill on the way to his house,” Jeff said, “and he tried to put on the brakes, but nothing happened. He ended up riding up the side of the house of his next-door neighbor, Hugh Gerrard. The bike flipped over and flattened Phil.”
Even starting his bike could be a hazardous task for Phil. “He would put gas directly into the carburetor,” Joe said. “It would always backfire. I’m surprised it never burned up in all the thousands of times he did that. He would just fire it up and off he’d go.”
• • •
Phil was never shy about drawing attention to himself. If he was in Bothell on the Fourth of July, it was guaranteed that he would be crouched over a crate or two of outlawed but state-of-the-art pyrotechnics. He could put on a fireworks show as bright and explosive as any in the country.
None of Phil’s wild antics as an adult surprised the folks in Bothell. They’d been seeing his act since he was a teenager. Back then, he had an old hot rod that he kept in the backyard of his father’s house. Grant put the vehicle up on blocks because he didn’t want Phil driving it. With someone as rebellious as his son, Grant might as well have hung a sign on the car that read “Drive me.”
Phil and Jeff would sneak over there at night, bolt a set of tires on the hot rod, slip it out of the yard, and race it past Bothell’s city hall, burning rubber, the screeching sounds and distinctive smell awakening anybody within a block of the midnight mischief makers.
Then they would peel out of there, head back to Grant’s house, and try to be as quiet as possible in returning the car to the blocks.
“It wouldn’t be long before the Bothell cops came shining their lights,” Jeff said. “They knew it was us. They could see the tire marks going into the backyard.”
One time, Phil woke up in the middle of the night craving booze, but there wasn’t any in his house. The nearest liquor store was three miles away. He still had that car sitting on the blocks, but at that point it would only go in reverse. So, naturally, Phil got it off the blocks and drove three miles backward to satisfy his craving.
Grant wasn’t happy about Phil’s late night joyrides or having the police prowling through his yard, but he was even more agitated when the teenaged Phil borrowed a motor Grant kept in his garage and it wound up at the bottom of the slough that runs through downtown Bothell.
Phil didn’t have mischief in his mind when he and Jeff took the motor. They just wanted it to power a ten-foot mahogany boat Phil had bought.
Seemed innocent enough.
Phil was able to get the boat up to about thirty miles an hour. After he took a run with it, it was Jeff’s turn.
“I was just passing the bridge in downtown Bothell,” Jeff said, “when, all of a sudden, I’m staring at a flock of ducks directly ahead. Bam, I hit them, causing a hole to pop open in the bottom of the boat. Down she goes, with Grant’s motor.
“The hardest part was going to his house to explain to him how his motor wound up on a sunken boat.”
Phil’s most infamous Bothell exploits always seemed to involve the police, whether he was on their side or in their face.
On one occasion when he was well into adulthood, he drove his orange Corvette, a 1972 model in pristine condition with a tan interior, over to visit the owner of a gas station where he had worked while in high school.
As the two stood talking, a teenager snuck into the Corvette and took off.
While the gas-station owner called the police, Phil jumped into another of his cars, a Porsche parked nearby, and roared off in pursuit of his beloved Corvette.
The police were soon fully engaged in the chase, but not as engaged as Phil.
Heading northeast out of Bothell, the car thief was about four or five miles into his joyride when he looked in his rearview mirror.
There’s no way to determine his precise reaction, but it’s safe to assume he did a double take. Yes, the police were hot on his trail, but so was Phil, who had somehow managed to get ahead of the cops.
What could be more frightening than seeing Phil Harris, hair flying, murder in his eyes, bearing down on you?
Perhaps a distraction like that contributed to what happened next. Or maybe it was just the fact that, at the speed he was traveling, the thief wasn’t able to handle the ninety-degree turn in the road.
Whatever the reason, with Phil helpless to do anything about it, his treasured Corvette missed the turn and crashed into a telephone pole.
“It almost broke the car in half,” said Jeff.
“I was ready to kill that kid,” Phil later told Joe, “but the cops pulled me off.”
Was the teenager seriously hurt?
“Hopefully, but I don’t know,” said Joe. “We never asked.”
On another occasion, Phil and his Porsche went from pursuer to pursuee. It occurred on a highway about fifty miles south of Seattle.
Heading north, Phil pulled even with a cop, stared at him, then, for no obvious reason, flipped him off and floored it.
To Phil, flooring it meant reaching speeds well in excess of a hundred miles an hour.
“From what I heard,” said Joe, “he was really cooking.”
As he approached Bothell, Phil could see traffic had slowed to a crawl. He wasn’t particularly concerned, because there were no longer any police behind him.
Must be an accident, he figured.
But as Phil inched along, he could see that the delay was being caused by a roadblock up ahead. As he got closer, he realized there was a contingent of heavily armed police checking each vehicle.
They had been letting the cars ahead of him pass unimpeded, but once they spotted Phil and the Porsche, the police zeroed in on him and jerked him out of the car.
“Turns out they were looking for me,” Phil later told Joe. “I had forgotten all about it.”
A furious search of Phil’s car ensued, from top to bottom, but when the police, who were very familiar with his antics, couldn’t find anything, and an
attorney intervened, claiming Phil’s rights were being violated, he got off with just a ticket and a stiff fine. In any other city, he’d have wound up wearing an orange jumpsuit.
• • •
Phil loved nothing more than to roar through Bothell at a breakneck pace, but his fellow travelers weren’t always up to his speed. After Phil dropped a small fortune on a new Corvette, he asked his friend Dan Mittman to take care of it while he chased crab.
When Phil returned from the sea, he was delighted to see that his car was in perfect condition. But he was also puzzled.
“Hey, this car only has two-tenths of a mile added on since I left,” said Phil, his eyebrows raised.
“You were gone three months,” Dan told him, “and in that time, I moved the car around to avoid any sun spotting or tire rot. Two-tenths of a mile was precisely what was required to do the job.”
“I’m not tripping ’cause you only moved the car two-tenths of a mile,” said Phil, his voice starting to rise. “I’m telling you, that damned car is like a fuckin’ thoroughbred and has to be driven, and driven hard.”
Phil’s friends appreciated the much-needed reprieve provided by his return trips to Alaska. It allowed them a chance to calm down from the high-octane surge he injected into their everyday lives. Running with him was exhilarating, but it sure wore a body out.
Teenager or adult, Dutch Harbor or Bothell, Phil himself never seemed to slow down. Until he reached his fifties and his body finally rebelled, he remained an oversized kid, Peter Pan with tattoos.
CHAPTER 4
CAPTAIN KID
When I was just a deckhand, wet and freezing my ass off, I’d look up at the wheelhouse and see the captain up there, all dry and warm, wearing slippers. I wanted to be the one wearing slippers.
—Phil
Despite all the wild times on shore, when Phil was on the high seas, he was all business. It was sometimes hard to believe he was the same person. But once his boat left the dock, the drunken, drugged-out partier became a responsible, hardworking, no-nonsense fisherman.
