Page 8. MAINE COASTAL NEWS November 2012 Buying Lobsters on the Coast of Maine


A view of the wharf where the Woodward's performed their lobster business.


A view inside a lobster car.


The truck the Woodward's used in their lobster business.


Continued from Page 7.


When buying aboard the smack weʼd have her rubber tire fenders (painted white so as not to blacken the white sides of the boats) hung over the side and the fi sherman would come alongside. One of us on the buying team would have a bow line for him in hand and be standing on the rail by the fore rigging waiting for him to get close enough so that we could jump from the smack onto the bow of his boat. The forʼard deck of the boats in those days were not very wide, so we had a narrow target, and possibly a wet one, but jump we did, and make her fast on his bitt. See, the smack was moored in the tide of the Reach, and if we had the combination of tide running against the wind it could be very choppy. We then would get down into the boat and help him get his lobsters out. They could have been in fi ve gallon pails or tubs of various sizes, some weighing maybe more than 100 pounds. Weʼd get them hand-


ed up over the smackʼs rail and put them on the scales. Once weighed, the lobsters would be picked over and thrown in the well. Dad always gave “good weight”, meaning the beam on the platform scales would be down giving the benefi t to the fi sherman. Those lobsters that we would be plugging weʼd leave on deck for us to plug as soon as we got time. Many fi shermen did not plug their lobsters in those days. As noted, we didnʼt have the bands in the earlier days. Weʼd hand the tubs and pails back to the fi sherman and after heʼd gotten his cash, with bait and gas deducted, weʼd cast him off and heʼd go into our wharf and get his gasoline (not many diesels in those days) and in later years get his bait lowered right down aboard his boat. If it was low drain tide the boats couldnʼt get into our original wharf so weʼd have fi ve gallon cans of gasoline aboard the smack or on the car for them, again, the convenience ethic. It goes without saying that we had big gasoline storage tanks, fi rst on the wharf, and then larger ones up on the bank. An oil boat came to replenish the gas in the tanks before the bridge was built.


Most local dealers did not have smacks. Dealers that didnʼt have a smack would do their buying on their lobster cars and ship directly from their cars, either aboard some- one elseʼs smack or in crates by truck on the mainland.


When we were buying on the car


the fi shermen would come alongside and generally just tie up midships to one of the


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vertical heavy plank fenders on the car. Weʼd go aboard and help him get his lobsters out, get them weighed, pick them over, fi nd out how much gas and bait he wanted and deduct those costs, and pay him in cash, and get his tubs back aboard. Before Barneyʼs Cove was dredged our lobster car was moored off the shore from Grammieʼs house, out in the tide so the lobsters would have good circulation. A fellow from Jonesport and his wife ran a bait boat (herring) for several years. He would anchor or go to a mooring near where we were buying and the fi shermen would go along side his Canadian built sardine boat and get bait and pay him. Earlier, too, there were three sardine canning factories in Jonesport. Under- woodʼs was very convenient so the fi sher- men would go there or to another factory and buy herring cuttings for bait. After Barneyʼs Cove was dredged we built an extension on our wharf and moved the car in and moored her off the end of the wharf with a fl oat in between the car and the wharf. There was good tide fl ow there. We ran the gasoline and diesel fuel hoses down to the car. We had a telephone line down to the little building on the car, an extension from the Building.


On the new wharf extension we had


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large bait tanks that could be fi lled by truck from the mainland after the bridge was built. The fi shermen could leave the car and go a few boat lengths in alongside the wharf and their bait would be lowered down aboard their boats. Howʼs that for convenience? Not only were our fi shermen treated very fairly and provided with a convenient place to sell their lobsters and resupply, but they could always count on a genuine loud cheery greeting when coming in to sell. Theyʼd generally be greeted by fi rst name, or in some cases a nickname, and some conversation or joking. The fi shermen were good fellows and I think they appreciated that greeting and we enjoyed it, also. As a boy and young man I benefi tted from that multigenerational experience and it helped me in my profession in later years. Dealers to whom we sold would pay by check. In almost every case the checks were good… It was customary to take the checks to the bank in Jonesport and get them cashed, for buying lobsters that day. I had my driverʼs license when I was 15, so many times Dad would send me to the bank. Iʼd often row the ½ mile across the Reach, tie my boat up at Cummings and Nortonʼs, go up and get our car out of the garage and go down town to the Merrill Trust and get the check cashed. The folks at the bank and I knew each other. Theyʼd put the cash (maybe upwards of $3000) in a canvas bag and Iʼd head back uptown. If I needed to stop at Rus- sellʼs store for something I could leave the bag of money in the car and not be concerned about it. This one day I went back uptown and put the car in the garage and went down to the wharf where I loaded some freight into the rowboat and headed back to the Island. I got a good distance from the wharf and the man working there, who knew me, hollered out and asked me if I hadnʼt forgotten some- thing. I looked around and, yes, I certainly had forgotten something! Iʼd left the canvas bag with $3000 in cash in it on the lumber pile on the wharf! You could say that I was “The Absent Minded Professor”, but that would have been premature. I didnʼt become a professor until many years later. As you can discern, a lobster dealer had to have many different skills. Probably most dealers did not think of the necessary capabilities to be successful, yet they had those skills, in varying degrees. I didnʼt see it that way as a boy and young man in the


business, but now, looking back as a retired school administrator with over 40 years of administrative experience, I see the lobster buying enterprise from a different perspec- tive.


Another thing that I look back on now is the very thin margin the dealers had be- tween what they paid the fi shermen and the price for what they sold their lobsters. That margin, likely referred to as “freight”, was probably three to fi ve cents a pound. Of course, volume made the revenue viable. From the freight came deductions for shrink- age (shrinkage is not selling as many pounds of lobsters as you bought, because of dead lobsters, broken ones, giving good weight to the fi shermen, etc.), salaries, expenses, and taxes. A dealer let a lot of fi shing supplies go on credit. A lot of the credit was paid back… A dealer had to know his business and the many facets of it. He had to “stick to the knitting” and do what he did best. He had to be responsive to the changing times and trends and be nimble in keeping his company up to speed or ahead of the curve. A lobster dealer needs skills for buy- ing, marketing, selling, economics, storage, maintaining the product, transportation (water and land), developing and main- taining the buying station equipment and maintenance including boats and trucks, leadership, knowledge of laws, regulations, rules, psychology, management, supervi- sion, interpersonal relations including with Maine Sea and Shore Fisheries wardens, foresight, confi dentiality, reliability, plan- ning, programming, scheduling, developing and staying with the mission, and ability and prescience to know when changes should be made. He has to be an entrepreneur. A lobster dealer needs good people on


his team. We had capable, hard working, loyal and trustworthy employees, men that could see what needed to be done and do it. Dad worked right along with everybody else, often with his long legged boots hauled up because we handled wet tubs and crates. And, he ran the smacks. He knew things were in good hands when he was away. Change continued in our lobster busi- ness. In our case the Flora Belle was sold to a dealer in Montauk, NY. Dad used the Consolidated Lobster Company well smack Grace M. Cribby for a while and then bought the well smack Pauline McLoon. Both of those smacks would hold about three times the load of the Flora Belle, or some 15,000 pounds of lobsters. After keeping the Pau- line for a while we made a family decision to have a new well smack built. Riley Beal and Sons Boatyard was engaged and the 60 foot smack, Arthur S. Woodward, was launched there on Beals in 1949. Dad cashed in life insurance policies to help pay for her. The ASW was the last well smack built on the Maine coast. The ASWʼs well held some 16,000 pounds of lobsters and she was used year round.


In the mid to later 1950s trucks were doing a lot of the lobster transportation on long and short haul routes that smacks had been covering along the coast and points between Canada and New York. Again it was time for a change in the company so we had the well taken out of the ASW and she was converted to a sardine carrier. She was replaced by our lobster trucks, the larger of which would carry 14,400 pounds in crates. Our trucks ranged from Prince Edward Is- land to New York, with Boston being a quite regular run from Down East. Our wharf was so designed that the big trucks could back down and load directly from the water, so we could load our own lobsters and lobsters that had come in from Canada, all in crates. I


Continued on Page 9.


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