Many lobstermen around the Cranberry Isles take an extra person with them on their boats, and some captains even take two. The sternman keeps busy with a range of jobs that helps the captain haul traps in a timely manner. On the way to the first string of traps, the sternman will stuff herring into as many bait bags as possible before the first trap is hauled aboard the boat. Once the trap is on the rail, the sternman pulls out the old bait bag and dumps the remains amid a swarm of screaming seagulls fighting to get in on a snack. He or she replaces it with one of the newly filled bags. Then the trap needs to be cleared of things like crabs, kelp, sea urchins, egged and V-notched female lobsters, and lobsters that are not of legal size. The sellable ones are placed in a holding box to be measured and banded. There are buoys that need to be cleaned in order to stay visible on the water and traps to shift to another fishing spot. When a fisherman is used to having a sternman, fishing without his crew can add hours to his workday.
Lately, my husband Bruce has had some unplanned days alone on the boat, making his sternman saga part of our dinner conversation. In two weeks in May, he had four different people on his boat, all of them hardworking but each with circumstances that kept them from being able to stay aboard consistently. We reminisced about the people who have worked with Bruce over the last four decades.%u2028 From childhood friends to current co-op members, over 20 different people have worked on his boats. John Bryant was Bruce’s sternman when Bruce first caught over 1,000 pounds. Bruce recalls when John had a day off, he would pick up two Whoppers from Burger King to eat on the boat for lunch the next day. It always made him gag a bit to watch John wolf down those cold, congealed burgers.
Seasickness can be a great equalizer among sternmen. When I asked Bruce for a job in 1976, he had already hired a mutual friend who was far stronger than I. However, the guy got seasick on his first day out, giving me the chance to prove myself. I made sure I took Bonine before I even set foot on the Stormy Gale. Bruce remembers another determined sternman who would “toss his cookies” regularly without losing a beat on filling the bait bags.
An accident with a sharp knife, while cutting up alewives, caused Bruce’s current crewmember to take an unplanned break. Fortunately there was no damage to tendons or muscles and Sam should be back to work soon. A sternman always has to watch his or her feet. Unlucky Paul did not see a piece of kelp on the deck before he slipped and landed face first, knocking out a front tooth. Fishing stopped for the day so Bruce could take Paul ashore to see the doctor. Injuries away from the boat will also sideline a crew. I’ll never forget answering the phone one night to hear that Bruce’s sternman was in the hospital after he had been stabbed with a knife. Fortunately he survived and continued working several more years for Bruce. He was one of the best sternmen, working for Bruce longer than any of the others, though he was more adept at texting than returning Bruce’s phone calls. Since we don’t get a cellphone signal at our house, Bruce does not communicate by text with his crew. Another sternman was quite diligent about keeping in touch. He called one morning at 4:30 to say he was in jail, apparently after a fight with his wife. He was not the only sternman to spend time in jail, but he was the only one to call from there to say he couldn’t make it to work.%u2028
One spring Bruce had a sternman named Kevin. Though the catch was sparse, Kevin kept setting lobsters aside without putting rubber bands on their claws. He explained to Bruce that he was saving them up to practice banding a whole bunch of lobsters quickly, in order to be good and fast when the catch picked up. Another spring, Bruce’s sternman was the father of a college friend of our son Robin. He was a successful businessman from Baltimore who loved Maine and had always wanted to work on a lobster boat. Bruce needed a crew just at the time when Donald could be away from his own work for a month. The fishing was bad and the weather was worse, but the friendship from that April remains. Our son Fritz arrived from college to work with his father that May. That same summer, Robin was working on his cousin Malcolm’s boat, and their grandfather Warren was still fishing. There was something quite special about three generations of Fernalds working on the water.
The most well known of Bruce’s sternmen is Trevor Corson, another long time summer resident with dreams of spending a whole year on the island and working on a boat. Trevor was a terrific crew and is a wonderful writer. His time spent lobstering with Bruce developed into his book, The Secret Life of Lobsters. I can’t recommend it enough if you want to know more about the nature of lobsters and the men and women who work to catch them. Bruce recalls Trevor’s first morning, standing on the deck of his boat as the sun rose, looking around in awe. When Bruce asked what he was doing, Trevor replied, “I’ve lived in cities for the past 10 years. This is the most open and free I have felt in a very long time.”
There are many more sternman stories but not enough space to tell them here. I’ll end with a vivid memory Bruce has about his crew from 1977. They were lengthening out gear, and there were 80 buoys to be scrubbed in the steamy-hot water barrel. As Bruce turned around to check on his sternman’s progress at the end of a long day, he saw tears rolling down her cheeks. “I don’t want to scrub any more buoys!” she said in a tiny, whiney voice. In my own defense, I need to say that I finished scrubbing all of those buoys, even though I had blisters under my fingernails, and I continued to be his sternman for two more years. I may not have been the strongest or even the best, but Bruce still tells me I was his favorite.
-Islesford, June 7, 2012
