From a 92-year-old great-grandfather setting a few traps this year, to his 19-year-old great-granddaughter doing the same, the Anderson family is a living lobstering tradition in Port Clyde.
The family not only passes down skills and lobster lore from one generation to the next, it hands down the boats as well, and younger hands keep them afloat and fishing.
The patriarch of the clan is Douglas Anderson, who lives with his wife of 71 years, Beana Rose, in a snug and tidy house. Its picture window overlooks Port Clyde harbor, the Monhegan boat dock and Port Clyde General Store. The former manager of Port Clyde Packing Company, a sardine cannery that burned in the 1970s, Doug said that he has fished lobsters for 50 years and now he’s slowing down. He set a trio of traps last summer: “I had three and I gave them away. I can’t whack it any more.” He paused a moment, a fleeting smile. Then he said, “Come next year I might set ’em.”
Doug installed engines in seagoing tugs in Camden, worked as a machinist in Thomaston, a fish inspector in Eastport and at factories that pickled herring and alewives. He worked at Dragon Cement a couple of years. His father-in-law, Forrest “Ford” Davis, was another fishing family patriarch in Port Clyde. “When I was a kid,” Doug said, “lobsters were 10 cents a pound. When I had a dime, I couldn’t decide whether to buy candy or a dried fish.”
Doug and Beana bought their former three-family corner house for $700 and remodeled it themselves. They watch the comings and goings. They knew the Andrew Wyeth family; they remember brothers John and Robert F. Kennedy playing touch football on a nearby lawn. They keep track of eight great-grandchildren, proud that some of them are fishermen.
The senior Doug Anderson fished from Beana Rose II, built by Lee Cushman, and later from the Fod, named for his father-in-law. He left the “r” out of the nickname on purpose. The boat was originally built for Victor Ames. “He used to say a gull couldn’t beat that boat to Matinicus.” The Fod is now Kyle’s boat.
Doug Sr. often dreams of building a wooden boat. “I get around pretty good. I work in my shop. I work for the boys,” he said. “I got my fingers crossed.”
Douglas Anderson Jr., 61, has done all kinds of fishing throughout his life, but a few years ago settled into steady lobstering, a job that allows him to be home at night. But he is often out following his calling. In younger days a hard-living guy, he turned to religion and is now a lay minister, counseling fishermen and others. And this year he re-opened Doug’s Seafood, a take-out stand he used to have in Rockland, out of his home.
Doug Jr. remembers setting two lobster traps at age 6 from a peapod. By age 10 he had a 16-foot lapstrake skiff with a 10 horsepower outboard. He fished during high school and then bought a 32-footer.
He operated a scallop dragger up and down the coast. “I fished winters right up ’til I was 52. I got tired of Georges Bank and being gone. I said I’m coming home and going lobstering.”
Doug Jr. has some storm stories, including being out on Georges Bank in 1978 when winds were clocked at 90 mph and 40-foot seas crashed over his 91-foot vessel.
He had a personal storm, too, that led to his embracing Christianity at the Port Clyde Advent Church in 1993. “I knew that my life was a mess. I was close to losing my wife and my family because of my stupidity, my lifestyle.”
His latest lobster boat is named Amazing Grace.
Times are hard for lobstermen with high bait and fuel costs, and Doug Jr. believes the solution may be to do a much better job marketing lobster to consumers. “It’s hard to get 2,500 fishermen on the coast of Maine to do something, to agree on something.”
He recalled his grandfather Ford telling him “there were times he thought he would get rich and he never did; and there were times he thought he would starve, and he never did.”
The family’s lobstering tradition continues with two more generations. Doug and his wife Rhonda have two children, Kirsten (Anderson) Clough and Chris Anderson, both of whom have children who fish. Chris, 37, is a lobstermen himself.
Kirsten’s daughter, Cassie, 19, a freshman at Husson University and has fished with grandfather Doug for four years. Cassie’s brother, Kyle, 17, senior at Georges Valley High School, also fishes with Doug Jr. and Uncle Chris. “He’s one of the best men I’ve ever had with me,” Doug Jr. said. Kyle’s great-grandfather said simply, “he’s a fisherman.”
Chris Anderson’s son Douglas, 14, has his own skiff and sets 50 traps.
I have to be on the water,” Doug Jr. said. “I don’t know how to do anything else.” He said he is trying to encourage his grandson Doug to learn something besides fishing, but then again, grandpa has been taking him out on the boat since he was three years old.
Steve Cartwright is a freelance writer who lives in Waldoboro.