Elizabeth's class aboard the Havey Gamage.
Elizabeth is second from left in front row.

Student Sailor Gives

Graduation Speech

We have enjoyed following the adventure of Elizabeth Sherfey, our “Student Sailor,” as she participated in a “semester at sea” in the Ocean Classroom program aboard the Harvey Gamage. She is the granddaughter of my classmate, Jean Monroe. Here’s what Jean had to say about Elizabeth’s journey:

“She certainly had "the experience of a lifetime" - and we are so thankful for all who helped make this dream come true.” Jean

Our last entry of the adventures of Elizabeth Sherfey is the following graduation speech she gave on May 22:

One ship, four months, 17 weeks, 2,856 hours, 31 people, three heads, ten countries, 120 sunsets, 12 hikes, infinite snorkles and swim calls.

Together, we have done it. We survived. Congrats! Throughout these four months we have learned so much. Not only have we learned how to live, we’ve learned how to fully appreciate the little things. At first we learned how to sleep with everything we brought, work the head, pull on a halyard until our muscles burned, and to throw buckets in a seamanlike manner. As time went on and we got deeper into the Caribbean, we learned how to deal with the heat, enjoy the seemingly endless fruit, look for the green flash, climb coconut trees, and harvest cassava. Right around then, we started our metamorphosis into salty sailors. In the Dominican Republic we learned how to give all we could and appreciate our lives, how to speak broken Spanish. In Trinidad we sat through many long bus rides and learned to never close our eyes. In Tortola, when a ray jumped out of the water and over Softie, we learned to never look down. When we came back to the States, we saw our own culture through different eyes, learning about ourselves. The cold taught us how to wear all our clothes and still fit into our harnesses, while time itself made us appreciate the cold, misty, mornings as we headed up through New England. Maine taught us to be adventurous. Mystic taught us how to effectively shop for warmer clothes, and lookout underway taught us the beauty of singing the song stuck in our heads. From everywhere we’ve been, we have taken a little piece of knowledge, a little bit of a culture, a ticket to life.

The Caribbean taught us how to laugh and embrace the world. The US taught us how to be strong and carry on. The Harvey Gamage how to give it all you’ve got, and still have fun.
I have enjoyed becoming a schooner bum with you guys. Thank you for making our trip great.

- Elizabeth Sherfey, Camden, Maine

Note: If you would like to follow the complete journey of Elizabeth as it was reported on this blog space, check the archives for 2012 for January through May. Look for key word: Student Sailor. The February blog is “Harvey Gamage Log.”

          

These two views of our favorite meal in Maine don’t look all that appetizing here do they.

The History

of Lobstering

As I was researching for another project, I came across a subject I thought you might enjoy, the history of lobstering. I doubt that the lobster fishermen in the old neighborhood of the South End were too concerned about the history of their avocation. They were more interested in repairing the wooden lobster pots stacked up in their yards or repainting their buoy markers so they could get back out to haul. (By the way, for you non-Mainers, “out to haul” means they have to haul the traps onboard. Today that is done mostly by motor-driven winch devices onboard.) They also had to worry about Maine state laws governing their lobster harvest; lobster wars; the weather; and a decent price for their catch. 

Lobstering is a hard labor-intensive job. You have to be a hardy person to handle it. Most of the licenses along our part of Maine are handed down from father to son; otherwise you may have a hard time obtaining one. I might also add that some women have gone out to haul as well. I know of at least one Sea Goddess who falls into that category. Can’t remember her name at the moment, but she probably wasn’t the only participant of the Maine Sea Goddess Pageant who pursued that work.

Young lobstermen and women often start out in the business working out of a dory and hauling in their lobster traps by hand. Not an easy task.

So how did we go from using lobsters for bait and to feed children, prisoners and indentured servants to shipping our product all over the world as a favored delicacy? At one point, indentured servants in Massachusetts, who exchanged their passage to the new world for seven years of service to their sponsors, rebelled, and had their contracts state that they wouldn’t have to eat lobster more than three times a week. Imagine that!

The first reported “harvesting” of lobster was reported by James Rosier, of Captain George Weymouth’s crew. In 1605 on a voyage to Maine, Rosier wrote: “And towards night we drew a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters…which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit fishing would be…”

It’s possible that this early account established lobster fishing as the oldest, continuously operated industry on the North American continent. Today Maine is the largest lobster-producing state in the nation.

Lobsters were so plentiful that they were harvested by hand along the shore in the early 1800s. As an increase in demand came from the Boston and New York markets, “smackmen” appeared on the coast. These first boat-related lobster fishermen were so called because their small sailing vessels were called “smacks.”

The next big development came with the development of the cannery industry. Preserving live lobsters to be shipped elsewhere was a big problem. In 1836, Maine began to can lobster. Beginning in Eastport, canneries eventually extended down as far as Portland. The problem was that the endeavor was so successful that they had to begin using smaller and smaller lobsters in their canning operations to meet the demand.

The collapse of the canning industry, therefore, was then taken over by the fresh lobster industry. They began preserving lobsters in lobster pounds, the first one appearing on Vinalhaven in 1875.

The pounds made it possible to wait for better prices and to allow the molting lobster to grow a new shell and have it harden. Pounds became the backbone of the industry.

Smackmen were replaced in the 1930s by local, land based buyers who were the link between the harvesters and the public. Buyers purchased lobsters from a harvester who in turn bought fuel, bait, and other necessary items from the buyer. The local buyer either sold the lobsters to people who came to the pound to buy them or to regional dealers who sent the lobsters out-of-state. This system still exists today.

Lobstering was and still is a hard way to make a living.  If lobstermen can manage to make a living and put food on their family’s table, they are lucky. Today they have metal pots so they don’t have to repair the wooden ones all the time; and they have plastic foam buoy markers which are easier to handle and are easier to keep up. The lobster fishermen who go out to haul these days are sure appreciated by this writer at least.

In recent years laws have been developed to allow non-commercial harvesting of lobsters. I’m not so sure that is such a good idea and probably goes against the craw of a licensed lobsterman when he comes upon such a “lobsterman.” Leave it to the professionals I say. They have to make a living after all. Do they intrude on your place of business?

So there you have it. This information came mostly from the Maine Department of Marine Resources site. More interesting information can be found there as well as the biology of the lobster itself; laws; and other information important to lobster fishermen today. Go to:

http://www.maine.gov/dmr/comfish/htm.

Thanks for listening.

Submitted by Joanna Hynd of the

Thomaston Public Library

"Thomaston School Memories"

Display at the Thomaston Public Library

The Thomaston Historical Society has a new display in the large case upstairs at the Thomaston Public Library: “Thomaston School Memories,” a collection of items from the Thomaston Academy Building and other historic schools in Thomaston. Some items date as far back as 1883. The collection includes a framed diploma from 1902, a paddle from the class of 1953, as well as graduation programs from the class of 1893. Stop by the library in the Thomaston Academy on 60 Main St. or like

us on facebook.com/ThomastonPublicLibrary  to learn more!

Library hours: Tues & Wed & Thur 11-5, Mon & Fri: 11-7, Sat 11-3; 60 Main Street; phone 207-354-2453

My mother, Evangeline, in red and
 Aunt Virginia on the whale rock in Spruce Head
enjoying their retirement.

Front and Center, Mama

This tribute to my mother was written to be read at a party for her 80^th birthday. I was not able to be there. Her birthday was in May, so I offer this to honor her special day as well as for all the mothers out there on Mother’s Day.

She’s a woman of few words who believes her role is best played behind the scenes. Well today is the exception because today your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, husband and other family and friends here today would like you to step front and center so that we may say..”God Bless You’’ and “Happy 80^th Birthday.”

Mama, you’re the glue that holds this family together.

You taught us our manners.

You taught us respect.

You taught us what is right and proper.

You’re the string around our fingers and the one who pulls most at our heartstrings.

Anyone who ever said that Yankees are cold and inhospitable never spent any time at your house. You had four children but adopted four times who knows how many more. If a guest came to visit more than once, you assumed they really enjoyed themselves the first time and, therefore, you adopted them and they were no longer a guest but adopted as one of the family.

And who can forget all the good food you’ve cooked for us over the years. (Remember when the pressure cooker blew up down on Mcloud Street?) We all have our favorites such as:

New England boiled dinner

Fish chowder

Potato salad

Dandelion greens

Pies: apple, blueberry, chocolate, rhubarb, lemon meringue, mincemeat (all made with home-made pie crust by the way).

Roast pork and baked beans

The Christmas sweets: peanut butter chocolate balls, full stops.

And all the Care Packages with squares and whoopee pies in them.

The remarkable thing is that you can remember what is the favorite specialty of each of us.

Mama, you’re a woman of simple pleasures who appreciates the little things—like a bouquet of wild flowers, humming birds and phoebe birds, or just going to garage sales. Remember the estate auction on Water Street where you bought all that stuff in a laundry bag without knowing what was in it for 50 cents! It contained the pantaloons Nat wore as “something old” for her wedding day; old-fashioned lace and an old-fashioned black collapsible umbrella?

You have always wanted your children to enjoy life to the fullest; to experience new things; to do the best we could with what we had; to take the good with the bad in life; to let bygones be bygones and go on.

We won’t forget what we’ve learned from you.

You commented on the poor shape of an old house we passed once on a back road,

“Look at that house,” you said. “There’s probably an old couple in there all by themselves. The place is going to pot and there’s no one to help them keep it up anymore. There were probably a lot of kids there once and a lot of happy memories, but they’ve all gone now and the old couple is all alone and forgotten. So sad.”

Well let me tell you. That will never happen to you and Daddy. We remember too many good times. You’ll always be front and center in our hearts.

Have a happy day with everyone. And have a taste of lobster for me.

              Love,

                     Your daughter, Sandra

A Note: When my mother was still cooking she made me some fish chowder when I came home to visit. It was the last meal she ever made for me. It was delicious. Happy Birthday, Mama!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there!