Men's Lives Read online

  “A knowledgeable and wholly absorbing elegy.”

  —Time

  “A somber and moving account … Matthiessen’s passionate concern for these ordinary lives renders them extraordinary and universal.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Matthiessen … has written about the fishermen of New England with the same reverence for human dignity and capacity to capture the cadence of spoken language that was James Agee’s gift.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Peter Matthiessen has an uncanny ability to capture the moods of nature, the essence of place, and the everyday drama of human life.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Matthiessen has brilliantly recorded a way of life that is unlikely to survive much longer.”

  —Atlantic Monthly

  “This is a book that makes you first pity the victims of human shortsightedness and then rage against the arrogance of those who are responsible. Still, if these sturdy and self-reliant men had to pass on, it is good that they had Peter Matthiessen to write their elegy.”

  —Playboy

  “A stirring human drama unfolds in this latest book by one of the most important writers of our age.”

  —Houston Post

  “Passionate, descriptive, moving.”

  —Milwaukee Journal

  “Excellently done.”

  —Chattanooga Times

  “Matthiessen writes with evocative lyricism about a vanishing breed of fisherfolk who cling steadfastly to the hard-scrabble ways of their forefathers.”

  —San Francisco Examiner

  “A moving elegy for a dying craft.”

  —San Diego Tribune

  “A finely turned book, carefully researched, copiously annotated and warmly capturing the commitment and dignity of those who earn their living from the sea.”

  —Providence Sunday Journal

  “A powerful and empathetic chronicle.”

  —Newport News Daily Press

  “A unique piece of Americana.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A masterful celebration of craft, of pride in one’s work, of community, of endurance.”

  —Library Journal

  “A vivid and ultimately poignant portrait of a remarkably tenacious breed of people.”

  —Booklist

  “A remarkable evocation of a rough, close-knit, proud and fiercely independent community and the larger world of the sea that offers them life—and death.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE

  At Play in the Fields of the Lord

  Far Tortuga

  Partisans

  Race Rock

  Raditzer

  Copyright © 1986 by Peter Matthiessen

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-

  American Copyright Conventions. Published in the

  United States by Random House, Inc., New York,

  and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

  Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published, in

  hardcover, by Random House, Inc., in 1986.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Matthiessen, Peter.

  Men’s lives.

  1. Fishers—New York (State)—Long Island—

  History. 2. Seining—New York (State)—

  Long Island—History. 3. Long Island (N.Y.)—

  History. I. Title.

  [HD8039.F66U5. 1988]

  338.3′72709747′21 87-40095

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81970-3

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  The Old Days

  1. Indians, Whalers, Farmer-Fishermen

  2. Early Surfmen

  3. The Edwards Brothers and the Lester Boys

  4. The Return of the Striped Bass

  5. In Bonac: Clammers and Scallopers

  The Fifties

  6. Poseyville and Captain Ted

  7. A Delicate, Fine, Fat, Faste Fish

  8. Under Montauk Light

  9. Amagansett Winter

  10. Sportsmen and Politicians

  11. Swordfish, Fish Flour, and Bunker Boats

  Modern Times

  12. Changes

  13. Poseys and Bonackers

  14. The East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association

  15. A Dying Fishery

  16. Summer of 1983: The Havens Crew

  17. Indian Summer

  18. Baymen and Bureaucrats: Southampton

  19. The Seine Crews: Autumn

  20. The Trappers: Fort Pond Bay

  21. The Winter Ocean

  22. South Fork Spring: Montauk, Georgica, and Hither Plains

  23. Bluefish Summer

  Epilogue

  Notes

  About the Author

  It’s not fish ye’re buyin, it’s men’s lives.

  Sir Walter Scott

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book owes its existence to Adelaide de Menil, whose friendship with the fishermen brought to life an idea put forward by fisherman-photographer Doug Kuntz.

  Quotations from Elisha Ammon, Carol Havens, Robert Vetault, Jenny Syvertsen, Sally Lafoe, Ruth Lester, and John Wood come from interviews (now part of the archives of the East Hampton Town Marine Museum) by John Eilensen. These voluminous transcripts, indexed and annotated by Hortense Carpentier, are now accessible to future generations. Fishing and historical articles in the East Hampton Star by Susan Pollack and others (see Notes) proved extremely valuable. Researcher Anne Witty, librarian Dorothy King, and the staff of the East Hampton Star suggested and furnished useful documents. Baymen’s Association Secretary Arnold Leo supplied data on striped bass legislation, and Carleton Kelsey furnished certain points of historical information.

  My warm thanks to such friends and old fishing associates as Bill Lester, Milt Miller, William Havens, Stewart Lester, and Richard Lester for patient, generous help in putting together this account of the lives and history of the baymen. Thanks are due also to Brent, Walter, and Wally Bennett; Donnie Eames; Jack Edwards; Johnnie Erickson; Ann, Ben, and Billy Havens; Lindy Havens; Danny King; Doug Kuntz; Calvin Lester; Francis and Jens Lester; Jimmy Lester; Lottie Lester; Gail and Madge Lester; Tom and Cathy Lester; Mickey Miller; Stuart Vorpahl, Jr.; Sandy Vorpahl; and Jarvis Wood. All made significant contributions; most checked the text for accuracy; none is responsible for any errors that may remain.

  The book’s emphasis upon ocean haul-seining and the haul-seining families inevitably excluded some of the best fishermen on the East End. I extend sincere regrets to the many baymen, past and present, whose names do not appear. Like a good boat or a good net, a story that works must be well made, and a confusing number of names and characters would only do damage to a book intended to honor every bayman, whether his name appears in the text or not.

  SAGAPONACK, NEW YORK

  May 1985

  PREFACE

  Two humpback whales, the first I have seen in a decade, roll softly on the surface, like black shining rocks in the silver ocean. Great whales were once so common off the coast at this far east end of Long Island that shore whaling was an industry, but I have seen them from the shore only a few times in my life, and, feeling elated, walk with them along the beach a little way. They move slowly to the east, off the narrow strip of sand that separates Georgica Pond from the Atlantic.

  The wind is out of the northwest, and the day is cold, but already the sea breathes its sweet stink of regeneration. The great animals spout thinly in the cold clear light, and the wind fans
the spume to mist on the huge horizon.

  A few years ago, on another day of spring, a Sagaponack neighbor brought a fish into my yard that had turned up in the nets early that morning. For several years I had hauled seine with the beach crews, and this farmer-fisherman had done so for much longer, and neither of us had ever seen this beautiful silver fish, ten pounds or better, that he held before him with both hands in instinctive ceremony.

  I turned toward the house to fetch my book of fishes,1 then turned back, grinning. It was not the arrangement of the fins that told me what it was but a pang of intuition. Perhaps this rare fish from the cold Atlantic was on its way to the ancient mouth of the Connecticut River, which fifteen thousand years ago (before the melting glaciers raised the level of the seas, separating Long Island from the southern New England coast) was located at what is now Plum Gut, off the North Fork of this great fish-tailed island. Like the great whales, the Atlantic salmon—once so abundant in the fresh clear rivers that the Massachusetts colonists were forbidden to feed it to indentured servants more than once a week—had been reduced to these wandering survivors, to be wondered at in the cold spring sun like emblems of a New World prematurely old.

  This book is witness to the lives of the commercial fishermen of the South Fork of Long Island. The inshore fisheries with which it will concern itself fall into five divisions—netting, trapping, dragging, shellfishing, and setting pots. A full-time fisherman, or bayman, might participate in most of these activities in a single year. Those with large work boats of thirty-foot or better may devote themselves to dragging all year long, adapting their boats in certain seasons to lobstering, or setting cod trawls, or long-lining for tilefish, swordfish, tuna. Because a big boat with high fuel costs and overhead must be kept working, such men rarely fish inshore, and are not baymen. However, many baymen crew on draggers in the wintertime, and many draggermen return to the bay as they grow older.

  Full-time baymen—there are scarcely one hundred left on the South Fork—must also be competent boatmen, net men, carpenters, and mechanics, and most could make good money at a trade, but they value independence over security, preferring to work on their own schedule, responsible only to their own families. Protective of their freedom to the point of stubbornness, wishing only to be left alone, they have never asked for and never received direct subsidies from town or county, state or federal government.2 Being self-employed, they receive none of the modern social supports such as unemployment insurance and sickness compensation, and because their income is uncertain and irregular, they can rarely obtain bank loans and mortgages. Yet every year they find themselves taxed harder for boats and trailers, trucks and gasoline, shellfish digging and fish shipping licenses, docking license, scallop opening license, permits to take certain species (shellfish, lobster, striped bass). Nearly a dozen taxes, permits, and licenses plague every bayman ready to engage in the various fisheries according to seasonal availability and market demand, as the inshore fisherman must do if he is to earn his living all year round.

  Meanwhile his livelihood is threatened by powerful sportsmen’s organizations seeking to limit the commercial harvest of so-called game fish, in particular the striped bass, a species that, for most commercial men of the South Fork, represents the difference between bare survival and a decent living. For the past half century, the sportsmen’s crusades to reserve this fish for their own use were defeated by the bass itself, which seemed to grow more plentiful each year. Then, in the seventies, the species suffered a serious decline, apparently the result of cumulative pollution of its main spawning grounds in the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. In New York State in 1983 the angler’s organizations, supported by federal agencies, succeeded in promoting legislation that drastically curtailed the striped bass harvest by commercial fishermen and threatened the very survival of their way of life.

  Among South Fork fisheries, the one most imperiled by bass legislation is ocean haul-seining, which no longer exists anywhere else in the United States except on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Because their fishery will be the first to disappear, Long Island’s ocean haul-seiners are the main subject of this book. In haul-seining, a net-filled dory is launched through the open surf, an enterprise that, on a rough Atlantic day, demands nerve and experience as well as skill. Without the striped bass, haul-seining is unlikely to survive, and the end of this fishery will mean the end of a surfboat tradition that began when the Atlantic coast was still the American frontier.

  Most of the surfmen come from the main fishing clans, which descend from the farmer-fishermen and the offshore whalers of centuries ago. In recent decades, most fishing families have been forced to sell off land that had been in the family for generations. Those who are left subsist in the last poor corners of a community in which they were once the leading citizens. Meanwhile their townsmen, prospering on the bland resort economy, have mainly lost a historical sense of the ocean character of the South Fork that attracted so many wealthy visitors in the first place. Few of the few who are even aware that a fishing community still exists enjoy the continuity with the past represented by boat-filled backyards in the oak woods of Amagansett and the Springs, by sharpies and scallop dredges, flag buoys and fish traps, by a dory in black silhouette on the huge empty sky off the ocean beach.

  Here within sight of the blue shadow of New England’s industrial seaboard ten miles to the north, moving at daybreak on back roads, the fishermen go their traditional way down to the sea. They are tough, resourceful, self-respecting, and also (some say) hidebound and cranky, too independent to organize for their own survival. Yet even their critics must acknowledge a gritty spirit that was once more highly valued in this country than it is today. Because their children can no longer afford to live where their families have harvested the sea and land for three hundred years, these South Fork baymen—old-time Americans who still speak with the Kentish and Dorset inflections of Elizabethan England—may soon become rare relics from the past, like the Atlantic right whales, a cow and calf, that in the winter of 1984–1985 have been appearing here and there off the ocean beach.

  On December 4, 1984, finishing the first draft of these journals, I walked down to the ocean for a breath of air. The day was cold, with a northwest wind shivering the rainwater where ice was broken in the puddles. Rising and falling in flight along the dunes, a flock of gulls picked up the last ambient light from the red embers in the west. The silent birds, undulating on the wind, shone bone white against massed somber grays, low over the ocean; the cloud bank looked ominous, like waiting winter.

  From the beach landing, in this moody sky and twilight, I saw something awash in the white foam, perhaps a quarter mile down to the eastward. The low heavy thing, curved round upon itself, did not look like driftwood; I thought at first that it must be a human body. Uneasy, I walked east a little way, then hurried ahead; the thing was not driftwood, not a body, but the great clean skull of a finback whale,3 dark bronze with sea water and minerals. The beautiful form, crouched like some ancient armored creature in the wash, seemed to await me. No one else was on the beach, which was clean of tracks. There was only the last cold fire of dusk, the white birds fleeing toward the darkness, the frosty foam whirling around the skull, seeking to regather it into the deeps.

  By the time I returned with a truck and chain, it was nearly night. The sea was higher, and the skull was settling like some enormous crab into the wash; I could not get close enough without sinking the truck down to the axles. I took careful bearings on the skull’s location, and a good thing, too, because four hours later, when the tide had turned, the massive skull had sunk away into the sands, all but what looked like a small dark rock in the moon-white shallows. I dug this out enough to secure a hawser, then ran this rope above the tide line, as a lead to the skull’s location the next morning. But fearing that an onshore wind or storm might bury it forever, I went down at dead low tide that night, under the moon, and dug the skull clear and worked it up out of its pit, using truck and
chain. Nearly six feet across, the skull was waterlogged and heavy, five hundred pounds or better. Not until one in the morning—spending more time digging out my truck than freeing the bone—did I hitch it high enough onto the beach to feel confident that the tide already coming in would not rebury it. By morning there was onshore wind, with a chop already making up from the southwest, but the whale skull was still waiting at the water’s edge. Bud Topping came down with his tractor and we took it home. When Milt Miller, who was raised by the old whalers, had a look at it a few weeks later, he said it was the biggest skull he ever saw.

  SAGAPONACK, NEW YORK

  May 1985

  1.

  Indians, Whalers,

  Farmer-Fishermen

  In 1633 the bark Blessing of the Bay was sent forth by Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut to explore the fisheries of what Dutch navigator Adriaen Block, in 1614, had named Lange Eylandt. Marine fisheries were the main support of the New England colonies, and the voyage affirmed the abundance of marine life, but Winthrop noted in his report that Long Island’s Indians were “very treacherous.”

  These local bands of coastal Algonkians grew beans and squash and corn, preserving the corn for winter use in a farina or porridge known as samp; with arrowheads fashioned from beach pebbles of chert and quartz, they hunted the bountiful game. But the foundation of their diet was food from the sea, in particular the myriad shellfish—clams, oysters, scallops, mussels, whelks—that were available all year. Like most coastal Indians, they used fiber nets and basket traps and made weirs of branches on the mud flats that trapped fish moving into deeper water on the falling tide. They also towed branch traps, fashioned hooks from bone and antler (weighting their lines with grooved-stone sinkers) and hurled deer-bone harpoons. Their midden heaps contained shells, scales, and bones of sea turtles, sturgeon, and a variety of bony fishes, which were dried on scaffoldings or smoked for winter provender. The Shinacuts, or Shinnecocks, who fished originally from the Pehick Konuk or Peconic River all the way east to Accabonac Creek, in what is now East Hampton, and the Meantecuts, or Munnataukets, who were concentrated in the vicinity of Montauk Great Pond, were skilled boatmen who traveled to the mainland in big dugout “cannows.” Because they made offerings to the fierce Pequots of Connecticut, the east end of Long Island was known as Pommanocc, or “place of tribute.”