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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket Vol. 43, Number 3. (Fall 1994) p. 74-76

The Way It Was : Dory Fishing
by Arthur McCleave, as told to Henry Carlisle

In 1959 the late Henry Carlisle spoke with Arthur McCleave, then aged 83, about his experiences in the fishing grounds off Nantucket. This is a transcript of that tape-recorded conversation. Arthur McCleave died in 1964 at the age of 88.

Arthur, they tell me you've been fishing off the beach in domes for over sixty years. Now how did all this start?

Well, in the early days before I can remember, fishin' was done in boats about the size of whale boats, manned by six men.

And that was not a dory?

Very much larger. Each man kept what fish he caught, and they were all threw together, and in order to distinguish them they had private marks such as a slit tail or a cut across the head, and so forth. When they landed on the beach they had so many fights over dividing up the fish that they abandoned the large boats and took to large skiffs manned by two men. The skiffs did not prove to be practical for landing on the beach in rough weather. Then someone introduced the dory which proved to be the best type of boat for shoving in and landing through the surf.

That was about, ah, eighteen hundred 'n' ninety. About the time I started fishin', in 1891, there were about forty dories fishin' from 'Sconset, twenty from Quidnet, and a few from Wauwinet. These were all one-man dories, thirteen foot on the bottom and seventeen foot over all. Each man had a fish house on the beach where he dressed and salted his catch, and durin' the fishin' season, October to Thanksgivin' and March to June, we all had a small house on the beach to live in. In those days everyone salted their fish. We would keep them under salt for four days, wash them out and dry them on the flakes for four days, and then ship them to Boston, Providence, New Bedford, and to wholesale grocers.

It would be at least a month before we received any money from the time we caught the fish. Now after the fall season was over, around Thanksgivin', we would double up—-that is, we would go two men to a dory—-larger dories. These dories would be fifteen foot on the bottom and about twenty feet over all. We would live in town and drive to Surfside with a horse and wagon. At Surfside, we'd fish for haddock with trawls. Each dory would have four tubs of trawls, five hundred hooks in each tub.

That's two thousand hooks. Is that right?

Each dory. My dory mate and myself have often landed five or six hundred fish in one dory. We would start from town at four A.M. and it would often be one A.M. the next mornin' before we were through baiting up two thousand hooks and ready to go again.

Well, did you bait them every day-—two thousand hooks?

At night. Bait 'em at night, have 'em all ready to go the next mornin'. Then we had to open clams first, for bait. Had to dress the fish, ice 'em out, and pack 'em. That's when we were fresh fishin', y'know...y'had to pack them.

Why, that's a terrible day.

You know it! You used to work twenty, twenty-two hours steady.

And nobody could do it now, could they?

God no. They don't try—-he, he. We had a dory at Wauwinet, 'Sconset, Surfside, and 'Sachacha.

One in each place?

Durin' the winter if 'twas too rough to get off in one place, we could fish at another, see, and we used to fish all winter.

Now, let me get the kind of fish straight. There was, it was codfish except at Surfside, and Surfside was-—

Yup, haddock. It was haddock at Surfside. Of course, we got some codfish mixed in, y'know, but it was mostly haddock at Surfside.

And bluefish. We used to get bluefish to 'Sconset in the summer.

It was a common occurrence for someone to smash up a dory in landin' on the beach. But in those days we would chip up and buy him a new one the same night. That's the way we worked them days.

They must have had a few narrow escapes or close calls in that work.

Well, we had a few. I remember one particular. We was off Sankaty, thirteenth of January. We had four ten-line tubs out. Y'know, that's with two thousand hooks. And it come up snow squalls, the wind breezed up nor'west, and we had about four hundred fish in'er—-big codfish—-and we was just gettin' ready to dump 'em overboard. The boat started to roll and we'd fill her every time, y'know, so one man was just paddlin'. My pardner says, "Are we gainin'?" I says, "Sure." We was goin' astern all the time. There happened to be a vessel out there and he was lookin' for us. It was comin' up—-the snow squall was comin' up—-and he shot up alongside. He says, "Boys, you're takin' long chances." We says, "We know it." So we hove out a couple hundred on his deck, and he towed us in under 'Sconset. We made two trips ashore with the fish, what we had in the dory and what he had on deck, and we had to hire a horse and wagon from 'Sconset from Jim Coffin to bring part of them to town. So that night he parted, this vessel parted that towed us in.

What do you mean "parted"?

Parted his cable. The only thing that saved him was a Lathrop engine. He'd start her up—-'twas a moonlight night--and run in under the land fer ten minutes and let her drift ten minutes. And the next mornin' it was down to three. The only thing that saved him was that Lathrop engine. If that engine'd ever played out he'd have gone on the beach.

But you were-—you'd gone ashore.

Yeah, we'd gone ashore. Down to thirty-eight when we landed.

And you'd come in in the dark in the middle of the night.

Yeah.

You had your fish, though.

We had the fish. Oh, one time we was off Surfside, my pardner and I. In fact, this pardner I was speakin' about, he and I went together for twenty years. He used to be a skipper out of Boston, big vessels, and his name was Ed Travoy. He was with me in dories. One time we was off Surfside, sou'west of Miacomet Rip, in the winter, and we had so many fish in the dory the seas would come in one side—-the fish was piled up aft-—and go out the other. One of us was bailin' with a bucket and the other fella was rowin' til we got by the end of Miacomet Rip. When we landed the keeper of the Surfside Station—-they was all down there when we landed. We had seven hundred fish in 'er and the keeper says, "Don't never do that again." He says, "All I could see was the tops of your heads." He says, "We was comin' off, but we didn't think 'twould be any use." And this was in the middle of winter.

We had seven hundred fish, and they were cod and haddock mixed.

They shoved in the dory and took out three hundred of 'em before we landed. We was about that much out of the water, that's all.

They averaged four or five pounds apiece. Now that's a load. That's seven hundred fish in a dory.

Now, one of the worst things, the hardest, was getting the lines baited and cutting the bait.

Yes, yes, cut the bait. Open the clams. Sometimes we had to use quahogs, sometimes we used sea clams, sometimes soft clams-—whatever we could get.

How did they get sea clams? I've seen them after a storm here on the beach. How did you get them without a storm?

Oh, there was a lot in the harbor at one time. They used to tong them. Use tongs, y'know. You've seen tongs. We used scallop rims, too.

Aren't they very soft?

Yeah. We used to put 'em on the bench and let 'em drain instead of pickin' them up in your hand, hookin' them on. We used to put the hook in and wind 'em around the hook, They'd stay on better than any bait there was. They'd dry right on the hook. Best bait there was.

Let's have a little more detail on this hook trawling.

Well, we'd have four tubs. They were sugar barrels cut off about two thirds of the way up. We'd have these lines, what we call sixteen-pound lines, about half as big as your finger, and every six feet apart we'd tie on a ganjun* with a hook on the end and it would hang down from the big line. And we'd anchor on one end. When you first started you'd throw out an anchor with the trawl attached to it, then one man would row and the other fella would throw these hooks out and they'd run about two miles to the four tubs. When we got 'em all out we'd drop an anchor on the other end then leave it for about an hour. Sometimes we'd row back to the other end to start the haul. Sometimes we'd lay on that end where we dropped. All depended on the tide and conditions, y'know. We'd be over in about an hour and a half. We got codfish and haddock. One fella would haul and the other fella'd coil in the tub and coil it all back. Then they'd have a gaff. Come to a fish, just hook the gaff in and slip 'em in.

But when you coil with a thousand hooks on, you've really got a job of keeping it from getting tangled.

Oh no, no trouble at all. Just lay 'em in there, every hook's right on top. It's the way you haul 'em. When you come to bait up you don't touch the ground line at all. You just pick up the hooks and bait 'em.

The way you say it, it sounds easy. But if you took a greenhorn and did it...

He wouldn't last five minutes, hell no. I've seen greenhorns start to go trawlin'. They'd see how 'twas done and one day they'd never tackle it. Another day they'd get all balled up. I had an old fella with me one winter, trawlin'. We was off Quidnet, it breezed up nor'east and we had a big load of fish on-—three or four hundred. It breezed up, getting rougher and rougher every minute. 'Course, every sea on the beach was a breaker. No chance to land a'tall. So on the way in I says, "Johnny, when she strikes the beach, drop your oars and jump. Never mind the dory, never mind the oars or anything. Just jump and get clear of the dory." "Well," he says, "my grandfather was drowned and I had one brother drowned." So I says, "You're damned consolin'. You think we're goin' to drown today?" And he says, "We might, you seaweed." When we did land, the next sea leveled us right off. After we struck the beach the next sea filled 'er full of water, washed the fish out. That's when you have to look out, when you're landin'. You're liable to get hurt when them dories hit you.

*Gangion: an extension of the line or leader