Ready for fishing / Phil gives gun safety lecture

With a belly full of ice the hull settled a bit deeper aft,

changing the feel of everything in the boat.  Subtly curved decks, doors and windows cut at carefully designed angles suddenly appeared to be straight and level, the builders having planned for things to appear normal with the extra weight in the hold. With the exception of the main deck seeming a tad steeper as it faired into the bow in the forward part of the mess room, she felt much more natural under foot as we replaced the heavy hatch covers, secured with tightly stretched canvas held in place with two by four batons all around, hardwood wedges pounded into iron brackets at each corner of the heavy hatch combings that raised the opening three feet above the level of the deck.

The old boat’s decks tilted to the left under the force of heavy bronze propeller flukes beating the water past the rudder, hard over to the right, throttle momentarily touching full power ahead giving the engine all the diesel it could burn, spitting a bit of extra up the stack to form a little white cloud in the still air overhead.  Lines fore and aft had been simultaneously let go and pulled into the boat hand over hand, sturdy gloves protecting against crushed barnacles from the lower reaches of the pilings lodged in the cords of the nylon rope.  One line remained, taught between a stout cleat forward and a muscle and barnacle encrusted piling amidships, springing the stern directly away from the face of the dock.  Silence as soon as she began to swing out, wheel spun over to the left then reverse thrust vibrating the decks as water began to be pulled in under the hull astern.  The spring line slacking with a splash, pulled in to be coiled ready to tie up again back in the inner harbor that was a ten minute run at idle speed up the line.  A series of short bursts of power alternated between forward and reverse had her bow pointing up the channel toward the inner harbor by the time the lines and large orange floats used as bumpers against the low floating docks were in place ready to tie up again on the other side after the ten minute run up from the fish plant.

A single screw power boat of this kind has very little response to the helm when it is backing up.  One of my early memories in the Commander was a time when she was moving from the usual tie up place along the large dock in front of Seattle Ship Supply at the Terminal over to the fuel dock at the outer end of the long finger pier where the halibut fleet spent the dark months each year.  To stay out of the men’s way on deck I was up on top watching Clifford thread her way along the narrow passage between boat sterns toward the open water six hundred feet beyond.  At that time the old low speed machine down in the engine room started on compressed air, and reversed by coming to a complete stop, then the cam shafts were moved just enough so that when it started again it would be going in the opposite direction.  As a kid I was aghast that the engine seemed to be dying out every time he tried to shift gears, just hoping that the darned thing didn’t run out of air before we could get out of the tight spot.  Not knowing anything about the engine reversing its direction of rotation instead of having a marine gear that changed the rotation of the propeller shaft it seemed like they were just having trouble keeping the old hunk of iron running.  I also was unaware that the only way to steer a boat like that in reverse is to get her moving, then glide along in neutral until a correction on course is necessary, then using forward thrust against the rudder to kick the stern back toward the desired direction.  It seemed to me that Clifford was amazingly calm when the dammed old engine wouldn’t run at all half the time, then died out every time he needed to shift gears.

The hay wagon analogy is furthered by the direction of rotation of the propeller wheel in reverse pulling the stern in one direction, so that the boat will not back up in a straight line as long as the wheel is pulling in gear.  To go in a desired direction the skipper will give her a bit of snooze to get her moving, then shift back to neutral align the steering wheel so the rudder is centered, and let her glide along for a few seconds until a course correction is necessary.  If the stern needs to swing a bit in the direction she naturally turns in reverse, then a little shot reverse thrust will usually do the trick.  To turn in the other direction the steering wheel is spun hard over in the direction away form the turn and the gear shifted into forward, so that a bit of power churning at her stern will swing her where she needs to go.  Needless to say these boats really don’t back up a lot, but with a little practice and some help from the deck crew they can be put anywhere they need to go in the often restricted spaces in small boat basins.

The load of ice, twenty tons or more, required for chilling fish in the hold as well as adjusting the boat's trim, was manufactured in a room on an upper level of the fish plant.  A powerful compressor chills the surface of a steel drum, ten or more feet long and three feet or so in diameter, set up to turn at a snail pace.  A fine spray of fresh water mists from several shower heads spaced along the length of the drum a foot or so above the drum onto the its super cold surface.  Cold steel immediately begins to freeze the water into a quarter inch layer of ice which is then flaked off on the far side of the drum by a steel blade set to ride a fraction of an inch above the surface. A trough with an auger at the bottom catches the shower of fresh ice flakes, moving them into an adjoining room where the temperature is well below zero.  If the fisherman is lucky, he won’t get green ice, fresh off the ice machine its temperature is just a bit below freezing and will quickly melt into a hard to chip lump that melts too fast in the hold.  Ice that has been piled up in the plant for a few days will be much colder, easier to work with over a period of several days.  Crusted over on the top, it will stay flakey and easy to layer in around the fish as the hold fills during the trip.

In the fish hold of an ice boat there are a series of separate compartments, divided with stacks of removable bin boards supported in slotted stanchions, posts running from the floor to the underside of the deck above.  In the Commander they were about five feet on a side, two rows up the middle, the area known as the slaughter alley, and a row along each side.  The side bins, sometimes called side pans by old timers are shaped like a cross section of a wine glass, narrow at the base, getting much wider toward the top.  By the time I landed on deck with the boys for this trip the old wooden bin boards had been upgraded to light, tough aluminum that had been pressed into a squared off corrugated shape, ends ground smooth for hand protection.

When ice is taken for the trip all of the bin boards are in place, and the hold is filled from floor to deckhead starting at the back of the room.  Because the forward sections of the hold occupy the biggest area in the hull, the place where she will carry the most weight of fish products, this is the place that will be filled first when working out on the grounds.  Depending on the characteristics of the boat, two or three of the first row of bins will be left empty, just a foot or so of  fresh bottom ice onto which the first catch will be piled.  Then, as fish come aboard they are shunted from the deck into the empty bins in the hold while someone shovels ice over them in layers from the adjoining bin of fresh ice.  Always careful to fill her evenly on each side then the middle to keep a steady trim, the process is repeated, emptying the bins directly aft of the area where fresh product is filling the spaces.  Ice man can be kind of the shit jot, ‘send the kid down to ice the fish’ sort of thing, but in our crew Tom took the responsibility as a quality control position.  He was the biggest and strongest as well, able to handle the ice hose at the fish plant as well as to at the shoveling and raking necessary to keep up with the fish coming down from the deck after each tow of the net during the trips.

While the fish plant crew lowered the heavy twelve inch hose through which the ice is delivered into place Jon and I set about pulling the hatch covers.  The largest opening in the boat, the six foot square fish hold hatch sat in about the middle of the working deck.  Raised a good three feet above deck level with a four inch thick timber combing, that reduced the danger of sea water sloshing up over and into the boat if the heavy hatch covers are open during the fishing operation.  Mind you, there are strong superstitions against taking the covers off during a trip, which are also fitted with a smaller man hole opening for general access, and on bigger boats like the Commander the deck was fitted with smaller water tight bronze hatches, three on a side that could be individually opened to put fish product down with a much reduced risk of taking an unexpected drink on water, which in many cases is a onetime affair.

Boats culture has a long tradition of often silly superstitions, but the one about removing the hatch covers during the trip has more than a small amount of basis in practical experience.  One time I was in Sitka, a few years after the Kodiak trip in the Commander, doing some long lining with a friend, we cleaned up the boat after the trip and walked up town for a nice breakfast in a little restaurant.  The weather had been mild and after a couple days of very intense work, and a good catch it felt really good to get cleaned up and relax while the pretty waitress filled our coffee mugs and brought steaming plates of hash browns and eggs from the kitchen in the back.  My friend, Eric a guy he knew at the next table, and asked the perennial fisherman’s question, “How was your trip?”

To which the fellow replied, “Not so good, the boat sunk and we were in the water for a half hour before being picked up.  We had the hatch open to throw down some big ones, and a sea washed over the deck and filled the hold in a heartbeat.  She went down like a rock.”

I was stunned actually by the near surreal aspect of the brief story.  Here he was warm and dry, dabbing the last of his easy over egg from a platter in the restaurant with jelly toast, talking about coming within fifteen minutes of eternity, in a matter of fact way, as if it were just another day in the office and the boat going down no more of an annoyance than a jammed printer.

Tom, the the biggest and strongest guy on board, dressed in cold weather gear and heavy gloves, climbed down the hatch and took the end of the clumsy ice delivery hose, while Jon and I positioned ourselves on either side of the hatch with short lengths of line around the twelve inch tube with which we could help him direct the ice into every corner of the hold.  Divided into a number of sections, called bins and side pans with a system of grooved stanchions into which aluminum bin-boards were fitted from the top, each removable to access the space in the bin.

The fish hold occupied the space in the hull, under the main deck from the bulkhead at the back of the engine, just a bit forward of the middle, to a second bulkhead positioned about a third of the length of the boat forward of the stern.  The shape of the hull, wide and full in the middle, fairing up shallower toward the stern produced a room that tapered up toward the deck the further back you went. 

The hatch on the Commander was covered with three heavy panels, secured by a square of canvas that was wedged in place with wood staves at each side, with rope lashings tied across in each direction.  In preparation for taking ice, the ropes and canvas were already removed, and while the ice hose was being lowered Jon and I took the covers, one of us at each side of the three foot hatch combing and stacked them on deck, leaning against the divider separating the main section of the deck from the raised area, called the table that covered the back third of the deck area.  In the mean time Tom had put on his heavy bib rain pants and a padded “float coat”, which acted as protection from wet and cold, plus would keep him floating if (God Forbid) he should ever go over the side into the water.

Spaced out as usual, as we waited for the ice to start coming down the tube I peered into the dim hold and tripped back to the day a number of years before when the boat was in Seattle, a few days after returning from an adventure out in the Aleutian Islands on the UW charter.  The early sixties was a simpler time, when silly notions like security and forbidden zones were much less common, and the boys in the boat has spent all their off time scrounging in dumps on the islands that were filled with stuff left over from World War Two days.  Several guys were up on deck with a few of us working below passing things up to them.  Grabbing a pair of old boots someone shouted for me to throw them out onto the table.  I didn’t yet know that the aft deck was called the table and wondered if I was supposed to try and toss them up through the galley window onto the table there.  It seemed best to hide my ignorance and gave them a hefty toss anyway.  Gales of laughter immediately chorused across the deck above, as the boots sailed over everyone’s head and splashed in the water over the side of the boat.  The boots may be gone forever, but I never forgot the meaning of the word table in reference to parts of a fishing boat deck.

Actually by the time I came up into the boats myself I don’t think anyone called this area the table any more.  That term probably dated back to the era when a seine net was pulled over the side of the boat after a set by hand, and a large platform that could swivel to help in what must have been a back breaking job sat on the back section of the boats deck.  The only time I had ever seen one of these things it was in a junk pile where Jon and I were playing as kids, and we did not know what it was.  Only years later when I found vintage pictures of the old days fishing did I realize the origin of the term table.

When Tom finally completed filling his bins and the dock crew pulled the whole thing up and out of our way, he climbed back on deck looking twice his already hefty bulk, orange hooded float coat and dark bib oil skins caked with a layer of bright white powdered ice crystals.  We joked that he looked like Roald Amundsen[1], ancestor of ours by family tradition, back from exploring the wilds of the polar region.

While Tom went in to change out of his arctic exploration gear Jon and I replaced the hatch covers, dogging the canvas down tight with batten boards wedged at the corners into stout iron brackets.  For extra measure a line was threaded through eyes near the base of the combings up over the top of the hatch across in each direction, tightly tied off so that she could turn up side down without losing the covers.  Then at a word from Phil up on the top house we dropped the lines and got things ready to tie up back in the inner basin for a quick trip up to the grocery store before heading out of town hunting for a load of shrimp.

When everything on deck was ready, tie up lines and crab float bumpers at the ready Jon went into the galley and I decided to scramble up top where Phil was running the boat from the flying bridge on top of the wheel house.    Over a period of many decades the design of this area changed little, four or five foot solid cowling around the roof line of the house above the front windows, extending five or six feet back along each side, usually faired down in a slope or steps to the deck level, with a pipe rail enclosing the rest of the roof area creating a convenient storage area for lighter equipment like marker buoys and extra lines that can be lashed to the rails.   Old photos of boats from the twenties and before show the pipe rail around the entire perimeter of the deck house with the wheel and shift lever standing in the open, sometimes with a bit of canvas stretched around the front for a bit of protection.  Usually an open, heavily greased link chain connected the wheel in the house with the one on top, sprocket on a shaft punched through the front of the deck house.  Later someone had the bright idea to run the chain up inside for a bit more protection from the elements.  By the thirties the pipe and canvas cowling around the front of the flying bridge area was being replaced with the solid wooden structure.  At first just capped off like any other solid railing in the boat, later the idea of a low outward angled tinted glass windshield was added.  The glass, mounted in hardwood frames that supported the bottom and sides of each glass panel, helped shield the eyes from some of the bright reflections off the water close aboard in front of the boat, and also deflected the wind and even some of the salt spray that hit the front of the house and was directed straight up the front of the house below.  The layout of the area varied little in most of the boats I ever worked on, heavily painted cast iron steering wheel with wood hand holds on the spokes, mounted on an iron or bronze stanchion, throttle and shift controls close at hand, usually on the right side of the wheel.  Usually a solid two by twelve bench ran across the area, mounted in the side cowling at the ends, in the commander the a little box like raised area gave the person at the wheel a place to sit with a better view.  There also was an outside depth sounder, mounted in a box with a plastic front cover, hinged with stainless steel so that it could be opened to adjust the instrument.  In the early sixties they had installed an upgraded automatic pilot that had a remote control, attached to the brain box below with a long black rubber insulated cord that in theory at least could override the pilot and also change course settings from the bridge.  I still remember the day they took the boat out to Blake Island with a huge gang of family for a fun afternoon on the water, trying out the new gizmo.  Cliff, the older generation’s skipper for many years was having no end of fun steering the boat with the two little black buttons on the hand held controller.  By now the chain and pulley steering system had been replaced with hydraulic lines and pumps, so that a turn of the wheel with two fingers was sufficient to change the angle of the heavy iron rudder, held steady in stout bearings behind the ever thrashing propeller wheel.  Phil was looking ahead past a boat two hundred closer to the basin, probably scoping out an opening at the float where he planned to put her when we got in.

I was spacing out on the view when the shots rattled over our heads.  Brought me instantly back from the image of the cannery boat skipper, brought back from town drunk in a wheelbarrow, or was it a taxi, the last time I had been in that place a few years before.  First time I had ever seen anyone totally drunk, and it was a bit scary but a couple of experienced women in the crew who had been drinking with him all afternoon but didn’t seem to be nearly as impaired took control of the boy, half dragging him into his cabin as the rest of us let go the lines and we were on our way out of town.  A repeat performance in Yakutat, and probably again when we hit Seattle three weeks later may have been his last fun, the next year when we got back to the boat after a winter in the real world we found out that Bjorn had been lost at sea later that fall on his way back north in a crab boat.

Two pops followed immediately by the tell tale rattle of little bits of hot lead zinging overhead, originating from the boat out in front of us entering the harbor.   The rattle of a rifle slug tracing an arc over your head is an unmistakable, like seeing a dead body in the street for the first time, no one has to explain what it is.  When someone pops a round off in your direction your gut just knows.  As kids out plinking with the little single shot .22 my brother got for Christmas one year, we got a thrill of danger every time one of the little lumps of lead bounced off a rock and whined out into the distance, but that sound is completely different.  There is never a hint of the unique rattle of the slug in the air when it tears through the air overhead when you are behind the muzzle.

Phil and I looked up instinctively, but said nothing.  Five minutes later, Phil cranked her into reverse with just the right amount of power to swing the heavy boat in place at the float, drifting to a stop at exactly the right place for us to string the lines effortlessly.   Almost before she had stopped moving, Phil quickly stepped off the boat and hustled his huge bulk up the float toward the boat from which the shots had been fired, which was tying up a couple hundred feet further along.  As I made my line fast I saw that he had grabbed two kids by the collars, one in each hand and was shaking them out like rag dolls on a close line in a wind storm.  Guess they were the shooters, and Phil was giving them a quick lesson in gun safety.

---

[1] Most families have oral traditions about famous ancestors.  When we were coming up it included each of the Norwegians who had made it into popular history, Amundsen, Byrd, Leif Erickson.   Recently I was fascinated by a documentary on Amundsen that related an early life story that seemed to mirror the vague information we had about our grandfather Pete Petersen.  Same date of birth, same number of brothers and a sister, father in the coastal shipping business passing at an early age leaving the family in difficult circumstances.  Genealogical research found old granddad Pete on a passenger list landing in New York nearly a decade earlier than family history recorded, and there never was any indication of how he came up with enough money to start a retail business in Washington state after working as a clerk for another firm for only a few short months.  Our suspicion is that he had something more to his background, and may have drawn on the Amundsen family history as a quick reference that became a part of our family lore, while the real, and probably much more interesting background of the old boy was lost after he passed in the nineteen twenties.    

Copyright 2012 - Paul Petersen

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced; stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.