Elders paint picture of days of commercial fishing under sail

April 18, 2008 at 10:10AM AKST

Editor’s note: Mindy Heyano and Derek Shade are high school students who wrote these essays for Ina Boulker’s Multicultural Class at Dillingham High School.

Gus Bartman’s story

Gus Bartman spoke to our multicultural class about his life and fishing during his sailboat days. Gus is Ina Bouker’s uncle and an Alaska Native.

Gus was 7 years old when he first started school at in orphanage in Kanakanak. At first he only learned from watching. He said he had to pay attention and listen well.

When the orphanage shut down, Gus had to move with his auntie. She lived at the mouth of the Igushik where there were no schools. Instead, he had to help work at the cannery.

Gus and his family eventually moved back to Dillingham. At first he was afraid to go back to school, because he would be the oldest kid there. However, he went back, because he wanted to have an education in English.

He began in the second grade in a territorial school. He was learning two languages at once: English and Yup’ik. He was constantly going back and forth between speaking the two languages. As he got older and better with both languages, he became a translator.

When he completed school he enrolled in the army during World War II. Gus was a pretty good wrestler and after joining the Army he talked to the gym manager and asked if he could wrestle.

The gym manager told Gus to try boxing instead. As a boxer, Gus was often the smallest guy in the ring. He had a record of seven wins and one loss.

When Gus was 20, he had his picture taken with heavyweight champion Joe Lewis. At the end of his boxing career, Gus said he was the greatest boxer in all of Alaska.

Gus left the army after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was treated at a veterans’ hospital near Anchorage. After that he had a choice of going either to Walla Walla, Wash., or Seward. He picked Washington because it was farther away from home. He ended up staying in Washington for 10 years.

When Gus went back to Alaska, he had to relearn Yup’ik. One of the things he was taught was to give up alcohol and tobacco. In Alaska Gus decided to become a sailboat fisherman and he remade Alaska his home.

Gus taught us to appreciate our education. He said that while we are young we should be soaking up the information we are being taught. He said that the older we get the harder it will be for us to learn, because as we get older we start to get busier.

Gus said that we have it easier when it comes to education compared to back in the days of his childhood. The final thing he taught us was to never be afraid to ask a teacher or anyone questions if you want to learn something.

– Mindy Heyano

Tough, hard work

In the 1940s and ’50s, the local fishermen used sailboats for commercial fishing. They had no engine power, and if needed, two big oars to row with.

If there was no wind, the sailboats were towed out to the fishing grounds by a tugboat, called a monkey boat.

There were two people on board, the captain and the puller. The captain steered the sailboat with a big wooden rudder.

The boats were about eight feet wide, five feet high and approximately 30 feet long. They had one sail, which was hoisted on a mast. The sail and mast would be laid down when it was time to anchor. The bow of the boat is where the two crewmembers would sleep, underneath a tarp hanging above them.

Back then, there was no fuel expense. The only fuel they paid for was kerosene, which powered small cook stoves, which the fishermen would cook their food on. This stove was called a Swede Stove.

The fishermen used the same size of nets to fish with, but it was made of different materials. It was made of cotton and had wooden corks, which meant that the net would sink fast if it wasn’t pulled in quickly.

Because it was made of linen, it had to be soaked in a mixture of many things every week to sterilize the gunk and other things that would build up on the net.

There were no bailers or separate storage places for the fish. Also, they had to get the fish from the boat to the tenders with a scythe-like stick. They hooked the fish and tossed them to the tender one at a time. They would spend hours unloading fish.

The days of sailboat fishing were some of the toughest and hardest times for fishermen. It was both physically and mentally demanding. Of course to them, it didn’t seem hard, it was just work.

It’s amazing how they managed to survive out there with no GPS or any electronic gadgets. I give great honor and respect to the men who endured and made a living by fishing during the times of the sailboat days.

– Derek Shade

Back

Digg This   Seed Newsvine