Re: [Paddlewise] My great-uncle, the Monster (was Re: [PaddleWise] Snippings)

On 10/12/06, Tord Eriksson <tord_at_tord.nu> wrote:
>
>
> After the crude patching up - he was no seamstress even on a normal day -
> he did kind of a seal landing with his huge cargo ship, jamming it between
> two huge rocks, as he wanted to save the precious cargo, if possible.
> Which he did!
>
> What a great story and an example, I belive, of tales that deserve to be
told and retold. Thank you Tord.

Regarding the seamanship of Scandinavians:

In the 1970s I returned to the USA after having been employed abroad for
what was then an unmentionable U.S. Government organization doing what was
then considered honorable work. I had an education but no recent marketable
skills; although it never occured to me to offer my services to HP. At any
rate, I became the owner of a 35 foot salmon troller named "F/V Sea Lion"
under a somewhat dubious premise. I was an airplane pilot and so knew how to
navigate (I had just flown a 1946 airplane with no starter, lights or radio
from Virginia to Seattle, after all) and got into commercial fishing under
the premise that if the weather got too bad you could - unlike an airplane -
at least stop and think it over. Shows you what I knew...

My home port while fishing was La Push, Washington and it was thriving in
the early 70s. There were three versions of commercial salmon fishermen:

1. School teachers. In those days you only needed a "landing permit" to be a
commercial fisherman and the campground at La Push was full of school
teachers who paid their $10 for a permit and would launch their boats -
mostly open outboards - on nice days and go trolling for salmon. They spent
their summer vacations picking up a few extra dollars to pay for their beer
and campsites and had a good time doing it..

2. Scandinavian fishermen. Mostly from Norway, I admit, but there were Fins
and Swedes too. They fished from classic scandinavian wooden boats equipped
with a tiny wheelhouse just big enough for the steering gear and lived in a
tiny cabin just big enough for a bunk and a diesel stove. They survived, as
near as I could tell, on coffee and "scrap fish"; halibut and cod that had
little value in comparison to a salmon which went, even in the 1970s, for
fifty cents (US) a pound. It was either throw it back or eat it but you
wouldn't waste hold space on a 10-cent fish.

3. Me.

It didn't take me long to learn that the group *I* wanted to emulate wasn't
the schoolteachers so I hung around with the Scandinavians when they were in
port. I learned how to ice up, where to fish, how to safely sleep at night
(go far enough offshore to avoid the ships or anchor at "father-and-son" or
behind Destruction Island) and how to make and drink coffee.

I'm convinced that they don't make men like these any more. None of them was
under 60 and a few were over 80 and they didn't just sneer at danger or be
contemptuous of risk; they never even acknowledged either. Their seamanship
was remarkable. They'd show up in a La Push coffeeshop after crossing the
bar (one of the most notorious on the NW coast) in a storm that had me and
the schoolteachers huddled over our coffecups afraid to even look at the
entrance.

I'm not at all surprised that one of them could stitch up his own forehead
on the bridge of his sinking steamer. But I have to admit that making a seal
landing with a sinking steamer would have never occured to me. I would have
gone off searching for a sandy beach.

Shows you what I know...


Craig Jungers
Royal City, WA
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