Laura Cooper: [0:04] He's the same age as you. I don't know. Maybe you know him. His name is Stuart Mork. He's a Puget Sound pilot here but he worked in Alaska for 30 years on various boats. He was a pilot in Western Alaska. He was the guy who told me that...

John McHenry: [0:19] Break in life and John was my break because he left me in a very comfortable position with the IFQs.

Laura: [0:26] That's what I heard.

John: [0:26] Because I was there at the transition period.

Laura: [0:27] I mean not about you specifically but I heard that he was not greedy.

John: [0:31] He wasn't greedy, yes. No, not at all but he was a real producer. He wasn't just a roll‑over. He had a tough streak but very fair‑minded. He's not involved in any kind of envy. He wasn't an envious...a lot of these things with fishing isn't any business...

Laura: [0:54] Not at all.

John: [0:54] Envy, greed and...

Laura: [0:55] I remember.

John: [0:57] John, if somebody else had a bigger trip he was like, "Yes, it's great. I'm skipper." He didn't sugar‑coat stuff very much. He's kind of quiet. You just see in his demeanor that he's good with this. He wasn't bitter. He's a happy man. Yes, he's a really good guy.

Laura: [1:16] OK, let me do the intro and then maybe you could talk about him a little bit. I got to say this officially.

John: [1:22] Go ahead.

Laura: [1:23] OK. This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices Oral History project. Today is November 13, 2010 and I will be interviewing John McHenry

John: [1:36] No, McHenry.

Laura: [1:37] McHenry, sorry. John McHenry. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Laura Cooper and Abby Taplin is assisting. Let's talk about the Seymour that you are now owner of since...

John: [1:57] I got on the Seymour in 1984. I started buying out the different partners in '85. I've owned the boat..by '89 I owned the boat. I bought everybody out.

Laura: [2:12] Oh, so you had the Seymour for a long time. The Seymour was built 1913 and it's part of the old halibut fleet of Seattle.

John: [2:20] Yes.

Laura: [2:21] Could you give us a rundown on the illustrious history of the Seymour?

John: [2:25] Seymour was built in Tacoma in 1913 by Edward Johnson who is a former partner of John Strand and Ed Johnson was a Swede.  Some of his other boats that he built were the THOR, the MASONIC, the  Eldorado the Seymour and there's others but they just come to mind. [2:53] The history is that there's no real distinctive characteristic of the Seymour. I know it's history from probably about the time John got involved in the boat [in the]60's. It was originally was built as a dory boat so it had six dories on board.

Laura: [3:08] Can you describe dory fishing just briefly?

John: [3:10] Dory fishing is where they would customarily have six dories on the boat vessel, two men per dory and they would go out to sea and they would let the dories off. Then the fishermen would fish right out of the dories with their long lines. [3:26] Then in the evening, they'd row back in and you probably remember, Laura, an expression, high dory. A good fisherman's high dory and the reason they call them high dory was the top dory fisherman was the top dory.

[3:40] That means he was put out first in the morning and he got to go on the boat last at night. We still use that expression of somebody who has a good roller turn or something. He's high dory and that's where the high dory expression came from.

Laura: [3:55] I didn't know that.

John: [3:57] She was originally built as a dory vessel and when John got involved with the boat, I think they were coming off some difficult times in the 60's and the fishing was tough. Seymour was in disrepair. It was in pretty tough shape.

John: [4:15] was a very industrious owner and he had worked in shipyard so he had the wealth off to fix her up as he went along. He re‑powered the boat, put a pilot house in and a horn timber in, bulwarks all over the place, mid‑ships and forward. [4:31] Then as I fazed in in the mid‑80's, I did a lot of work and put bulwarks aft, a new bow stem. The boat has been kept up pretty well and it still remains very productive which in large parts testament to John Rosvik.

[4:48] He's the one that set me up. He was the one that mentored me in how to fish. It was important to him when...I have IFQ program run in place that he wanted it to transition. He wanted it instead because I said John...IFQ is going to be worth a lot of money when you caught those fish.

[5:08] He said, "John I caught them and I sold them." They're your fish now. It wasn't just naive, benevolence on his part. The boat was incorporated. He knew the ownership of the rights belong to the corporation.

[5:20] He was right. Had it been another way, we would have done it the other way but John played by the rules but his benevolence left me in a very good position. After it was all said and done and IFQs went nto my hands he did say, "The only regret I have is that I should have put it into contract that if you sell out, I get half."

[5:46] He didn't and me and John made a gentleman’s  agreement that I wouldn't sell out.

Abby Taplin: [5:49] What's the IFQ?

John: [5:51] The IFQ is when they privatize halibut fishing and they gave us each a share and it was based on our previous production and there's a mathematical formula I won't bore you with but in essence they took the allowable harvest, a quota and [6:12] They gave us a percentage of that quota depending on how much fish we caught. John caught a lot of fish. First trip I made with him, we had almost 140,000. We had some real monster trips with him. We were the benefactors of this. John, being the way he was recognized it as a wonderful system.

[6:35] Because the world was filled with John Rosviks, we wouldn't have agreed, we wouldn't have all these troubles. He wasn't a manipulator. He saw it as this is going to be a great system. He's very happy for me and my family.

[6:48] He could see that this is just going to go on and on. This is how it should be. Does that help you out with that IFQ thing?

Abby: [6:56] Yes. [inaudible 06:58]

John: [6:58] It's a little bit more complex because each area has the... where we fish halibut, it's divided into three areas in the Gulf of Alaska and three or four areas in the Bering Sea so each area has some quota. Then it's also the same management scheme or rationalization if you will was applied to the black cod fishery as well. [7:24] We have black cod quota as well. That's our deal and it's been wonderful. I fish a lot in the open access fishery and we're running into a lot of problems and this seems to have addressed a lot of those problems, it's enabled my crew to buy quota. A lot of those guys have quota. It's been a good thing for the Seymour.

Laura: [7:49] Can you describe how John...

John: [7:53] Rosvik?

Laura: [7:53] Rosvik got his history with the Seymour and then merging into your personal history with the Seymour?

John: [8:00] Yes, John was in the merchant marine after the war. He was very competent . He's a Norwegian merchant marine. He was the first mate. I think his brother is a steamship captain and the one that became a steamship captain was the one that flew spitfires for the British. [8:19] The other one was airline pilot for SAS. These guys grew up in the small farm in Vigra. The father was a fisherman and a farmer. Vigra is a beautiful island but essentially a pile of rocks. They grew up fishing and they live right next to the dance hall.

John: [8:39] claims he's part Greek. He had dark hair the day he died so he was a little bit more flamboyant than the average Scandinavian that I've met. When he came over to this country, he was in the merchant marine until about the mid 50's and they go on these very long voyages. [8:59] He had a son Guir who was gone for two and a half years. The way it was structured then, it was very costly to come home. Norwegians at that time, it isn't yet full in society than it is now with the oil revenues and stuff. It was very poor.

[9:15] He knew. He just, not some jammed up. He did what he had to do. I think his wife was tiring of this and he was tiring of it. His brother Gunnar had immigrated to this country and Gunnar had a halibut boat. He ran the Nordby

John: [9:31] said when he would sail up on the oil tankers from Long Beach, California to Vancouver, British Columbia you'd see those white boats out there and white small fishing boat. He said, "That's the life for me." [9:43] He came to this country and he became a crew member. He fished on a number of the boats, the Sytrania, the Lady Olga,  a bunch of them and hit the long line in the summer and trawl and fish tuna in the winter. I fish pretty much year round those guys.

[9:58] Then he got on the Alrita with his good friend Otto Jangaard. Otto Jangaard was probably John's best friend. The Jangaard family is a very illustrious fishing family. They have built a bunch of boats and had great success in fishing especially the one brother, Speri.

Laura: [10:16] They were out of Alesund.

John: [10:18] They're all on same page guys, yes. They were on the same page as Jangaard's and this Rosvik. John was Otto's crew member for about 10 years. Somewhere in the 60's, I don't know the exact date but I would guess around '66, the Seymour was for sale really cheap. [10:39] She was really rundown and the partner, it was owned by a guy, the principal and it was Daryl Matheson who wasn't a fisherman but he was a clerk at the store. He was a clerk at Nordby's and Pacific Fisherman. It was almost like New England whaler. There was a bunch of different owners of the boat.

[10:59] I think she was doing OK. They were making up but they weren't cutting a fat hog. They were just kind of making it. Daryl have heard about this Rosvik being a really good man in the Alrita .. He enabled John to buy the boat I think no money down.

[11:14] I think he bought half for $13,000. Right away, John tore the boat apart and started, he's just a hardworking guy you know. He fixed her up as he went along and he did really well. He started producing and little by little kind of brought the boat back up to one of the top boats. That's how John got into fishing. That's how he got into the Seymour.

[11:44] Then when I got with him in '84, I was looking around. I was fishing for a guy on the Unimak which was a very high producer but a very tough boat to work on. It was a three‑man boat. He was a very good fisherman but a tough guy and I was getting tired of it.

Laura: [12:03] Was he a Norwegian?

John: [12:04] No. I don’t know that guy and he knows what he is. He's from Ketchikan. He's from another planet. [Chuckle] But again, he did really well with them and I got to know John over those years. I kept asking him for a job and he said, "I got nothing." [12:21] Then in 1984, he called me up in the winter. When he called me up he said, "This is the Internal Revenue Service." John was real into that. He liked to mess with you all the time, a great teaser. A great teaser in the side like John could hang web. He could fish anything. He'd fish everything so he could make a net and do all that stuff.

[12:46] I went over to his house when he was retired and he had a little granddaughter. Little brick house up in Magnolia or not little but Magnolia brick house. Around the balcony, they have put up this beautiful net to help keep the granddaughter inside so she couldn't get through the posted rails.

[13:04] I said, "John, did you make that net? Did you hang that net?" He said, "Yes. Yes, I made a net." I go, "I love it. It's a beautiful net. Yes, how long did it take?" He said a couple of hours. I go, "That's just unbelievable."

[13:17] I went home. It was before the fishing season. I told him my wife, and it was like my wife...my wife is from Poland so it relates to some of that European background type of thing. I said, "Dorothy, you wouldn't believe this net that Rosvik made. It's just really cool."

[13:33] Anyways, to make a long story longer, May rolls around and my wife always brought the Rosvik's mayflowers. I think it's the first of May they do that so she showed up at the Rosvik's with the mayflowers and I was up in north fishing.

[13:45] They took her out to the deck and she was, "Oh, that's the net you made John." He goes, "Yes, no, I didn't make that net." He goes, "Well, John said you told John..." He goes, "Yes, I know what I told John but I didn't make the net."

[13:59] He was always doing that. He was the only guy I know that would look at you, when somebody lies to you and...he would never lie about anything serious but he's the best bluffer I've ever met because he'd look you in the eye and then he would never say, "Oh, I was just kidding." Ever, never say that so he would have been a great poker player.

[14:18] Yes. In 1984, I got on the boat.

Laura: [14:22] Where did you come from? Were you from Seattle?

John: [14:25] No. I grew up in Pennsylvania and I went out to Kansas when, oh, probably when I was 20. I was working for my uncle. He's nursery's tree farmer. I was working for him. I always like working outdoors. [14:41] My cousin had told me about Alaska. He says if you go there you should work in the bush. You should either work with  a logger or a trapper or a fisherman. Don't go to Anchorage and work in construction. You can do that in Wichita or you can do that in Pennsylvania. You can do that anywhere.

[14:56] Go out and see it, that's how you'll see it. I hitchhiked up in 1974 and started with the little boat, the little guy named Helmet Opolya. He's a German fisherman. I know he's kind of a real crazy guy but you couldn't get good boats.

[15:16] It was just a little 36‑foot boat. I fish with this German, that's when I met Harold Samulson  .That’s when I started to see the fleet. I've been in Kodiak fishing on this little boat. We're not making any money. This guy couldn't catch enough fish to make a sandwich.

[15:32] I could see that the schooner thing might be something down my alley. But as I got to know those guys, it was very very clannish because this black cod thing hadn’t set in. It was still all little square heads and their sons and their nephews and all that stuff.

[15:46] I was snooping around the periphery of that fleet. I fish with the German another season and I got to know some of those guys. I think they like the fact that I was sticking around, maybe. I might be reading too much. They might not even care. Then I fish in Sitka in '76 or '77 and a girlfriend, we fished together.

[16:06] It was more of a mid‑size boat and a really good time. A guy named  Al Chestnut .He is a Sitka fisherman and he was really good to me. He showed me how to go to roller, kind of got me broke in more and I figured, OK. I got to get on one of those Seattle boats.

[16:25] I hitchhiked down to...I didn't have any money. We're a hitchhiker around those days, you know. I got down to Seattle and I really started looking in February. I got to know Ori Bell who's a pretty powerful fisherman. I knew Ori real well from Sitka.

[16:41] Ori was thinking about hiring me and I was looking around trying really hard. Somebody had told me about this Unimak over in Ballard Oil and I walked across the Ballard bridge and walked over to Ballard Oil and he shipped me. He hired me. We did really well.

[17:00] On the first season I was on there, we made 50 grand. You could buy two houses because a lot of the young fisherman says, "What's the biggest season you ever had?" I go, "I think it was '78." I was 23, 24 years old. I made 50,000 bucks. This is pre‑Microsoft. You could buy two houses for 50 grand.

[17:17] I went in to the bank at the end of the season. I had hair in those days. I had long hair. I was in good shape. I was young and the teller, she looked at me and goes, "Are you a drug dealer?" I go, "No. I'm not a drug dealer. I'm a fisherman." They brought the manager out. Because I had all the money, I was used to this kind of living out of a backpack lifestyle since $50,000 was a huge windfall.

[17:42] It was huge. Yes, it was just monstrous because I don't know that the president of the bank made that much money.

Laura: [17:49] Probably not.

John: [17:49] Here's this kid with this money. I sat on that and I think Rosvik all along is getting wind of this. He knew who I was. They knew the boat. It was a high line boat and had a reputation for being straight...we're very hardworking, real working boat. [18:08] We didn't have a cook. We didn't eat. It was just work, work, work, work and the guy was a nut. He was little and he was just really driven, kind of had a Napoleon  complex. To his credit, he was a very hard worker and a money maker.

[18:23] I got through that and I was with him for six years but towards the end of that, I was really getting tired of it, and trying to get on the Seymour and few other schooners and finally John shipped me in '84.

[18:37] Then I went with him and he told me I would go through the locks six more times. That's it, I'm going to retire after the '88 season. As typical Rosvik, methodical said and if you said something, that's what was going on. He loved to tease. He'd have all these benign little funny little lies but on the real stuff, the only thing he was intolerant is if somebody said they're going to do something they didn't.

[19:04] We could make all kinds of mistakes in town. We could go drinking. We'd get the fuel dock all hung over and all that stuff, you know what young fisherman do. He passed no moral judgment on any that stuff. He knew the human frailties. He knew what young fisherman worry.

[19:19] But if you told him you want to do that to your work, and that your work went undone. He terminated your relationship. He didn't forgive. He'd roll with the small stuff but the important stuff, the business stuff he wouldn't.

[19:35] He told me one time, he said, "You know John, with the ancient Vikings, they make a lot of mistakes. They might end up with their neighbor's wife or get in a fight with a neighbor, cut his arm off, things happen. But if a Viking lies, you're not a Viking, a boldface lie. He's ostracized. He can't and the reason he's ostracized is it means he can't be trusted."

[20:00] If you can't be trusted...and you hear about these and these more, how the Jewish people do business in the diamond thing. It's all word of mouth and interestingly  enough, that's still how we do, that's the pleasure of fishing for me now as I get older and I could just have them to get...I'm not old but I'm not young.

[20:17] I can start looking at some things in the rear view mirror. When we sell fish, $100,000 $200,000, $300,000 for the fish, there's not even a handshake. We say we'll be in on Tuesday. OK, John we'll be pulling under the waist, that's it.

[20:35] These are significant transactions when I go into the shipyard. I haven't signed the contract. This is the first contract I've signed. We don't sign contracts. It's all word of mouth. It's almost tribal. I don't really even have a simile for it.

Laura: [20:52] Fantastic.

John: [20:54] It's just a wonderful way to do business. If I go to Ballard Sheet Metal, if I go to Rocky Marine, the caterpillar people, Puget Sound Hydraulics, the shipyard, the fuel dock, you just go in and say, "OK, I want this, this, this. OK, John, be ready in a week or whatever." [21:13] You come in, you put your checkbook. You pay for it and it's just so unencumbered. Because there was times when I look at fishing and think, "Maybe I have to get out of this. I've done it for a long time." It just takes the chips off the table.

[21:26] But then I look at the options of how kind of the rest of the world works. There won't be another thing like this for me. That's been the great pleasure of fishing and a lot of that came from John and people like John.

[21:41] That's how they did business. That's how the insurance pools works, the hull insurance pools. As a result, we get out 90% of our whole insurance money back. They've just got this very fair minded way of doing things.

Laura: [21:55] Do you think that's cultural and...

John: [21:57] In part, yes. Yes, I think it is. I always said that...my observations aren't really complexional but I think Scandinavians are natural socialist. That socialism works for them because they really are fair‑minded. [22:14] Remember for those systems to work, you have to be fair‑minded and that's the way John was. I heard it some time, he said one time  to a Norwegian, it's OK to make as much money as humanly possible but it's not OK to show off.

[22:32] They're not all like this. There's some flamboyant ones and stuff. I think typically as a culture, especially those of Rosvik's era, Otto Jangaard and stuff, they're very successful guys but they're pretty understated about things. They weren't into this lavish stuff.

[22:51] Yes, I do think it's culturaI. I also think they're very smart. When they came here, they formed this association, Fishing Vessel Owners. It's still in place and it's been a very effective lobby. There's only been two managers over there.

[23:08] For this group of very primitive almost financially worthless boats, I'd have a hard time giving the Seymour away. We're a very strong voice and Alverson, our spokesman of Fishing Vessel Owners is a very respected voice in fishing.

[23:27] Not everybody agrees with him all the time and that's the way his, oh, gosh I'm getting older. I can't remember the previous manager but he was an important guy in fishing too. We've been very effective as a group and I like that too. It's just been a really wonderful life.

[23:48] It's been great. I know a lot of people in Ballard. Everything is word of mouth. I like doing business like that. When I go to the bank and I deal with the stock broker, I looked at my stock broker and I said, "You know, if I hired you to run my boat, I'd fire you."

[24:03] There's these promises and truly, well and a litany of excuses why we failed. I'm thinking, I'd never have that luxury. We can't fail. You're successful. For the guy that runs the boat for me now, my brother‑in‑law runs it a good portion of the time.

[24:26] He can make up a few excuses for a bad trip or two but at the end of the season, he has to produce. I realize it's not a real fair analogy but it kind of is. When mother nature is difficult to deal with, the weather and the whales and maybe the fish don't cooperate then you have to make...it's a very mission oriented goal oriented type of profession that I really like. I feel really lucky to be with these people.

Laura: [24:57] Are you still fishing yourself at all?

John: [24:59] Yes. I went up for a month or five weeks this spring and I'll probably continue to do that but the old saying the fat cat won't hunt, it kind of true with me. I've lost, and plus there never really was a prototype of a fisherman. I think I maybe broke down a little quicker. [25:16] I fish down very hard boats when I was younger. I've got, you know wiped out back and steel plates on my leg and all that stuff. It's starting to get to the point where I'm losing that real hunger to go do it. But I'll probably keep going. We're breaking my son in but I kind of didn't want to be there when they broke my son in.

Laura: [25:39] How old is he?

John: [25:40] He's twenty and he's a college student. I don't really care if he becomes a fisherman but I wanted him to see how it works. And get to understand the importance of being honest and productive and how we get things done because wherever he goes in his life and it maybe fishing, 50‑50 but I like to see him apply that same principles to whatever career he pursues. Yes, it has been a good life.

Laura: [26:17] Can you tell us about the whales? What do the whales do?

John: [26:25] They come  by, and have coffee and then all fish. No, the whales can interact with other fish. The sperm whales and orcas and we've learned to kind of outfox them as best as we can. But they're just a factor for us now, they're just a factor. But I think a lot of it has been sensationalized. [26:51] I know when John was still fishing and we took a Green Peace guy out on the boat. This is an example of how effective and how smart our association head is, Bob Alverson. He said we're going to have a lot of bad press  from Green Peace and you don't want that. In the timber industry, what they did is with the spotted owl . They put them on the hood of the truck.

[27:16] Well, you can't fight public sentiment and fishermen, we're in the minority. We're not going to win this fight. And Bob's been very clever how he did this. He goes, "We need someone to take a Green Peace observer out to the Western Aleutians “Well, I got cornered into it and then I have to go tell Rosvik.

[27:36] I think Rosvik probably grew up with whaling. He's from Norway. He'd go whale is another species. It's one of God's creatures. They're another thing. To be harvested sustainably. They hold no mystic to John.

[27:56] I go, "Look, we're going to bring this Green Peace guy in the boat, John. And I don't want you going off about whales. You're going to have to be quite about this, OK." We shipped this guy in Homer and we went into the Western Aleutians. Right to a whale central and we showed them that by doing this one it's very easy to vilify someone when you can't see them, fishermen are bad.

[28:25] But once you get to meet fishermen, you realize now, these aren't a bunch of guys with the one eye in the middle of the head clubbing baby seals. They're like everybody else, it's a career they pursued and they actually do have...oops, I'm sorry.

[28:42] We took the Green Peace guy out and he got to know us. And then he saw that we're not harassing these whales. And he saw that we can kind of co‑exist with them. Whereas before, Green Peace, they'd pound on our door and look for donations and the Green Peace observers are well intended and by and large they are a good organization.

[29:04] As I said we're conservationist. I'm not going off but on this specific issue, I think there's tremendous emotions attached to killer whales. They're the poster child of the movement and they'd say, "Do you realize what the halibut fishermen are doing in the Western Aleutians to killer whales?" And I go, "Whoa ! yes I do. That's where we go, that's what we do."

[29:28] It was a good stroke of business for us. One, it was the right thing to do. And two, it let them see, it helps to  diffuse the situation. We did the exact same thing with the short‑tailed albatross, which is a species. The Seymour, I was running the boat . We volunteered, the use of the Seymour, to perform a study to find the deterrent for the short‑tailed albatross.

Laura: [29:49] Can you put those Australian...

John: [29:52] Tory Lines.

Laura: [29:52] Right.

John: [29:53] Yes, and Ed Melvin, a guy from University of Washington, Sea Grant, headed up the program and then they brought an observer along and we took them out and we did these little experiments and we came up with a deterrent. [30:13] Again, Alverson did this. I mean I looked at  how the  logging industry had handled  on spotted owl and looked at  how we handled short‑tailed albatross. We took a potentially disastrous situation and actually turned it, one, we did the right thing but two, it turned into a good press. Now we're being viewed  Green Peace in small part. And the people concerned with these short‑tailed albatross were the good guys.

Abby: [30:40] What was the issue with the Albatross?

John: [30:42] The short‑tailed albatross are an albatross that are on endangered species list. And The Endangered Species Act is a drop dead statute. If we catch, I think and whatever the number is, you can count them on both hands. It's eight or nine or five. They can shut the fishery down and we have federal observers on the boat. [31:05] That's what happens there's an observer on the boat that goes, "That's short‑tailed albatross." They're an endangered species. That's right, yes, whatever. That's cool and no, no, you can't catch them. So they became aware of it and well they should and they were put on the endangered species list but they were driven to nearer extinction on Torishima Island.

[31:23] The Japanese would go in and kill them all for, I think they use for plumes and then something for girdles and these albatross are on the high end of the...

Laura: [31:38] They don't breed.

John: [31:38] They don't breed. It's like a bunch of ageing yuppies trying  to have a baby They have the moon and the stars and they just can't do it right and then they lay these eggs on these hills, these Torishima Islands like this so they finally get it together. They have the egg and the egg rolls down the hill. [32:00] They'd gone in and terraced, it's as though there's some species that just have, like a coyote. They have very high survival instincts. You can't get rid of them. They're smart, they're tough, they're the high end of that, cougars are like that.

[32:19] Conversely  it's just a miracle they're still around, they're cumbersome flyers. They don't have very good survival skills but the net result to that survey I think, there's more of them now. We're seeing them all over.

Laura: [32:32] But can you explain what the technical adaptation was  that the boats did to prevent the killing of the albatross?

John: [32:39] The deterrent we came up with? Yes, it was actually quite simple. We just tow two long lines. I would say, you'd describe them as a streamer line. They go back for 50 fathoms or so and every two fathoms or 12 feet there's a long orange streamer and these lines are towed. [33:01] Two of them right on either side of where our long lines are being deployed. When the birds come in to steal the bait, we call it stealing. They call it eating but when they come to take our bait this will scare them off. And it's really...

Abby: [33:21] They're probably are getting caught.

John: [33:22] Yes, birds can get caught on that.

Laura: [33:25] They go for that bait that's flying on hooks off the back of the boat and they prefer, I thought you deployed the line underneath the water.

John: [33:34] No.

Laura: [33:35] That's what's stuck.

John: [33:36] No. They may have that for other fisheries but ours are, no, they're not under, they're surface. They go back a long ways. I forget how long the Tory Line They call them Tory Lines and this has been a very effective deterrent. They use it on the cod fishery. [33:53] Once again, it's one of those things that rather than complain about it and woe is us and try to fight them in a battle we'd lose, we turn it around and our association's has been very good about that.

Laura: [34:06] The Seymour was boat that...

John: [34:08] Yes, the Seymour and in part...there were several of them but we had them on there for two seasons, parts of two seasons and they did all their, they'd have a control. Matter of fact we had to kill a few albatross that head to sea.

Abby: [34:27] What happened?

John: [34:28] What happens, we didn't get any short tails and this was all done. They had all the proper stuff for this. These scientists were on the boat and we pulled into King Cove. [34:38] We had about 15 of these dead albatrosses down on the fish hold. I forgot about them. All the Filipino guys jumped down and off‑load the boat and they're kind of holding these albatross and said, "Oh, yes, we eat those." [laughter] Yes.

[34:56] Our association's done a good job with that, dealing with these different and continual issues that might involved liability legislation or an environmental issue or fisheries management issues. Seymour's has been on Halibut Charters for the Halibut Commission and we've always tried to be like the other schooners, kind of active with preserving our fisheries and our kind of way of life.

Laura: [35:25] Can you talk a little about what the Seymour looks like and how it's made and what kind of wood it’s made of?

John: [35:31] Well, it's a very traditional halibut schooner. Seymour's about 80 feet long and 18 feet beam, a very deep draft vessel hence, the stability and a very narrow boat. I think in part because when she was built in 1913, they didn't really completely trust the engines so you could sail her and a very cumbersome sailor but you could just imagine what an adventure going to Alaska was in 1913 without any reliable radio communications. [36:08] These primitive machines for propulsion and they'd go out to the wilds just to totally undeveloped places so they needed the wherewithal to be able to sail her. I always sort of felt those boats were sort of a transition from a sail power to an engine powered vessel.

[36:31] The house is haft and there’s two masts forward, hence they call them the schooner, originally head sails and a lot of that has been change. We put a larger pilot house on, an aluminum pilot house and that makes for a more comfortable accommodations plus it  houses all the electronics and stuff that we now have, including  computers.

[36:53] I mean you can only imagine when they built that boat, they had a clock, a compass and an hour glass. That's it. I mean those guys didn't even know the concept of a computer. Now we have autopilots and satellite phones and all these things.

[37:12] The boat, it's really remarkable. The lumber was brought down to that boat in Tacoma. I'm sure it was horse‑drawn in beautiful virgin timber.

Laura: [37:23] What's it made of ? Do you know what kind of wood?

John: [37:25] Yes, the Douglas‑fir and it was first growth Douglas‑fir. That's presenting a problem because we can't get good Douglas‑fir anymore, good boat lumber so when we changed a plank, we'll have to change it again in another eight years. [37:40] The original planks are not going anywhere. They're just pickled in salt water and diesel fuel, no bug in his right mind could eat those planks. But the ones that's been changed, they have a fungus and I think that's a loss. One , the quality of lumber is hard to get and two, how they harvest it, I think that's sort of a lost skill.

[38:02] They'd cut them in the winter. I heard the old timer say, "Now you're supposed to cut the boat lumber. It has to be from a live tree, never a wind blown tree". A live tree and I think they cut them in the winter when the sap is down and then I think they often would pond them for a while.

[38:18] Float them and I don't know whether that was an infusion, what it did but there was a technique that they used and whatever that technique was, the vast majority, the planking of the boat is still original. It was a very very effective design, very sea worthy design but originally very very primitive. Yes, and we've added a lot of stuff to her now.

Abby: [38:44] Is it most, is it huge planks or was it old growth that was cut down.

John: [38:50] Well, it was cut down but there's some, I wouldn't describe the planks as huge or very long and I think the hull planks are in the order between two and three quarter inches thick and then the Seymour was built on sawn frames versus bent frames. A bent frame was more economical way to build them and it's a good way to go but they don't hold up as well[39:14] A lot of the later schooners were built up on bent frames. Sawn frames is rather than steam a piece of wood and bent it like a piece of linguine. They just take these big timbers and actually saw the shape of the frame and they're called double sawn frame boats.

[39:31] They're very close apart. I think it's seven inches. They say that I have a small fist. They say they're width of a man's fists, kind of apart. They're very close, seven inches wide and then this heavy planking on the outside and then the ceiling, what they call the ceiling planks which are the inner planks.

[39:54] It's plank on the outside and on the inside so the whole thing, you know, she's pretty thick. I know when we put the bow stem in, we use a piece of gumwood which is like ironwood. It's a very dense tropical wood, a very strong and the stem must be two feet thick and then behind it they have what's called the false stem which is another two feet.

[40:21] So when they put the iron, when the blacksmiths put the iron, they put a piece of iron over the bow stem called stem iron gives. It gives it even more bumping in the power. Piece of steel about three inches by three inches and they fasten that piece of steel to the stem.

[40:37] They had to use drifts that were like three feet long to get...Whenever I go to take anything off the boat I think, "Oh, boy this is going to be easy and jeez, you've got crowbars and chainsaws and the boat doesn't want to come apart."

Abby: [40:52] That's a good thing.

John: [40:53] Oh, yes, we don't want to come apart.

Laura: [40:55] And do you still ice the fish or how do you fill it?

John: [40:58] Yes, we still take ice when we still hand bait our gear. We don't have an auto baiter so we do it. We have the wench which we call the gurdy, handcoil the lines take them to the stern where they bait it. [41:14] And when the fish are caught, they're put into the checker which is a pen  right next to the fish hold and there they're dressed and then they're thrown into the fish hold which has approximately 10 tons of ice when we leave town and we just individually ice these fish as the trip goes on.

Laura: [41:31] No freezer units down below, it's all ice?

John: [41:35] No, it's still pretty primitive. Yes, it's still very physical fishery with the baiting and the landing of the fish and the coiling we have made. The boat, that's the one disadvantage to a schooner. The Seymour doesn't lend itself to an auto baiter. [41:56] She has a big pilot house on her so there's not that much room on the stern or we put an auto baiter on. We still fish in comparatively primitive fashion.

Laura: [42:09] Or traditional.

John: [42:10] Or traditional. Traditional fashion.

Abby: [42:13] How many lines do you put out?

John: [42:15] Typically with the black cod fish, we'll put out three lines and they are approximately two and a half to three miles long and they're anchored to the seabed. And we try to haul three of those a day. And the working measure of the gear is called skate which I think probably came from skein like a skein of yarn. [42:36] It's Scandinavian thing and a skate, a black cod skate is approximately 100 to 120 fathoms long with hook every 40 inches. Ours have 200 hooks each. And we'll deploy 20 to 25 of those skates per set, per line and we make three sets or three lines a day anchored to the seabed so you keep... the old saying in fishing, you don't want the gurdy, the money stops.

[43:03] You always, the gear is in the water fishing or it's coming on the boat. That's our plan that's our strategy.

Abby: [43:12] How does you anchor to the seabed?

John: [43:15] With the anchor.

Abby: [43:16] Just with the anchor?

John: [43:17] Yes, 40 or 50 pound kedge anchor and then from that anchor there's buoy line that runs to the surface of the sea and we have markers buoys on it and flagpoles so we can find it.

Laura: [43:30] How long do you leave those lines down to soak or to fish?

John: [43:35] With black cod fishing, we'll leave them a minimum of five hours and they can be down for a really long time, black cod fishing because there's not  a sand flea problem. With the halibut fish, it's a little trickier because we only fish on what we call hot ground. [43:56] With hot, meaning there's a lot of a sea lice, sand fleas , so you have to deploy the lines at first light. You can't put them out at night. We'll set at first light or right before first light at four in the morning, we'll put the lines out and we try to have them all back on board by midnight.

[44:11] Otherwise the sand fleas, I think the sand fleas e must go up into the water column in the daylight but at night they go to the bottom and then they'll damage your fish.

Laura: [44:24] What's a good catch for you these days?

John: [44:28] Well, the resource seems to be slowing down. Halibut resource black cod resource seems stable or improving and of course it depends on region. In a most productive black cod region which would be West Yakutat [44:50] We figure on 10,000 dressed pounds of black cod a day and that's a good day but not stellar. It's possible to get more than that and it's conceivable to get less but that seems pretty typical 10,000 dressed pounds a day.

[45:05] As we move a little further west, we get into the Central  Gulf Area  that'd be maybe 8,000 pounds a day. As you go through the Western Gulf, it could drop down to 3,000 or 4,000 pounds a day. Now, there's no real hardnumbers. In other words, there's no real and hard fast number for that.

[45:25] You can have a huge day and this and the next day but on average, I'd have to say that. For halibut, somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 pounds a day now, 15,000 pounds a day now is pretty good and 7,000 is not so good but you get those days. But the resource is much more productive than when I started in the mid 70's, much more.

Laura: [45:57] Why is that?

John: [45:58] They never did figure it out for sure but the foreign fleet's fish were heavy then. It's before the 200 mile limit and you could see the Koreans and the Poles and the Russians trawlers out fishing, they seem right out of Portlock  Bank. They're all over the place and for whatever reason as soon as they were gone, we just started seeing our fishing come back very strong in the 80's. [46:22] It just came back gang busters. When I started, I think the average catch is 32 pounds a skate and now, and if you haul 70 skates a day it's 2,000 pounds a day. That would be some real crying in your beer fishing now but that's just what was going on. They used to say that if they could get five a day, they wouldn't leave.

[46:46] There'd be this very long trips, they Alrita in the Seymour in the Vansee, they would fish 18 to 20 days for 40,000 pounds. Now high boat might have 80,000 but still it took them 20 days to get that at the peak, not sure what the peak was.

[47:04] It was either in the mid 80's or mid 90's at the beginning of the IFQ system. We had fishing where we could get 80,000 in a little over a day. It was just highly productive fishing, it was really hot fishing. And now it seems to be cycling down. The people that manage it, the organization that manage it is International Pacific Halibut Commission.

[47:27] They have been very effective managers or the resource and we've always pretty much complied with the recommendations and hence we have what appears to be a sustainable and renewable resource if you look at the history of the Seymour. I mean, we're going on 100 years. That's pretty good.

Laura: [47:45] International Pacific Halibut Commission is also about 100 years old, right?

John: [47:50] Yes.

Laura: [47:51] Or even longer or even older or they that they have started right around the same time.

Transcription by CastingWords

Part II

Laura: [0:10] What's the biggest Halibut that you personally have ever seen or caught?

John McHenry: [0:13] I'd say in the neighborhood of 400 pounds.

Laura: [0:14] Wow.

John: [0:32] It was a big one. I made a trip with John where we caught a 1,000 fish. Which isn't a huge amount of fish and we weighed out 90,000 pounds, so they averaged 90 pounds. Which is really big fish.

Abby:  [0:36] How big are black cod usually?

John: [0:56] Oh, a black cod? A 20‑pound black cod would be a very large black cod. So they would be in the seven to 20 pound range. 10 pounds would be, eight, 10, nine pounds would be typical.

Laura: [1:05] How many crew do you have on your boat?

John: [1:21] I have anywhere from five to six. When I fished with John, we were seven. John didn't come on deck. He stayed in the wheel house. We now have controls on the vessel that the skippers people like myself, can work on the deck. They don't have to stay in the wheelhouse. [1:38] But John was from that tradition where the man that ran the boat. He viewed it as if there wasn't enough money in this game to stay in the pilot house and run the boat, there's not enough money in this game. And a lot of people of his generation felt that way.

Abby:  [1:41] Have you had basically the same crew?

John: [1:57] Yes. Very, very little turn over. Little by little they start to wear out and you have to replace them. But it's often from another boat similar to ours.

Laura: [2:12] Can you tell us about the most extraordinary things you have seen at sea? Or the most extraordinary weather you've experienced? Anything like that?

John: [2:23] We've had a variety of bad weather. I don't know that I've seen anything truly extraordinary that any of the others haven't seen.

Laura: [2:28] But that doesn't, but the rest of us haven't seen it.

John: [3:19] Well, I've seen extraordinary weather compared to the population at large and one of the trips that stood out. It was one of John's last trips in '88. We went to the western Aleutians to get a trip of halibut and it was in October sometime. It was after the equinox and the weather, typically the weather gets a lot worse after the equinox. So, we went out to the western Aleutians and we had darn near a boatload, we had 85,000 pounds. It was a big trip. We had horrible weather going out there, and we had horrible weather while we were fishing. We started running back to Dutch Harbor and the bilge pump broke in the fish hole. [3:39] We can't really access that, because the fish hole is full of fish. But the manual pump still worked. It was at the end of a very long season, so the boat was leaking a little bit. We had to hand pump every hour out on deck. You would have to suit up and your guy says, "Go out there and pump this boat out." That was kind of a nuisance.

[4:02] We were going back, and we were all young. We were all in pretty good shape for this kind of thing. We got up to Umnak Pass and the dangers and the illusions in the Bering Sea really aren't so much at sea, it can be bad enough there. But it's in between the islands where you have these great tidal forces between the North Pacific and the Bering Sea.

[4:29] That's what really makes for what we would call "queer seas", "weird seas", unpredictable. We were going through Umnak Pass and we didn't pay very close attention to the current. We were going in against the wind and we caught this very strong current that was forcing us into the pass. It would almost remind you of whitewater rafting.

[4:59] The water got white, and they were choppy. There was no roll or rhythm to the sea. It was as though they were jumping straight up with no rhythm whatsoever. I remember I was on wheel with another fellow, Pat Baker, who still fishes. We slowed the boat way down, but we were still making 10 knots just idling along and getting smashed in these seas. There was nothing we could do.

[5:10] We couldn't turn back. Then the guys in the foc's'le, the forward part of the boat, were shaking their fists at us. Telling us to slow down. We said, "We already slowed down, there's nothing we can do."

[5:32] I remember John, who seldom woke up, came up. He lit a cigarette and just went, "Jesus Christ." That's all he said. That was the only time I became aware of where my survival suit was, because I wasn't sure. We were going through this, and it was getting bad. There is a part near Ship Rock where Umnak Pass widens out.

[5:55] I felt if we could get as far as Ship Rock, I could see it up there. We'll probably be fine because it widens out. But then it got worse. Then it was all white water. It was just very turbulent, and the boat was acting very strange. It was bad, but we got through it. That was the end of that crisis.

[6:16] We had some strong winds off Umnak Island. Sometimes fishing it probably came off the island at 90 miles an hour. In that type of wind you can't hear and the mast shutters. And I know that John said it even happened on big ships. There's something that's doing the harmonic.

[6:42] There because a real strange air in a storm. You have to yell a lot because it's so loud. The weather's so loud and then with the barometer down it makes you feel strange. I remember when I was younger people said, "I'd get headaches and my knees hurt." I thought, "Oh. Boy. I got a little older, the same thing started happening to me.

[6:53] Ross Fitch said there was a guy in the Aurita when he was a crewmember there, that they could always tell when there'd be a storm because he'd wake up in the middle of the night and start shaving. His beard would itch. [laughter]

Laura: [6:54] Yeah.

John: [7:02] The blow wasn't here yet. He hadn't even looked at the barometer. But it was the glass on the barometer. When the barometer dropped his skin would itch. [7:22] Yeah, that was a bad blow. We got into one in the south end of Kodiak one time. It was a real nasty one. But somehow or another the Seymour and those schooners were a lively ride. You're really getting pounded but they're very resilient. You feel pretty good.

[7:47] Actually, the worst I felt was that one in Umnak pass. Those other bad blows you'd just slow down and you didn't like it. It was bad. Didn't really bother me too much. Some of the big seas hitting the pilothouse, I didn't like that part. But it was OK. That one at Umnak pass, you really felt just this total sense of predictability.

[8:13] In a normal blow, the seas, there's a rhythm to them and every seventh one is a nasty one. You get into it and not too many surprises, but not. But that thing at Umnak pass, that was a very queer strange sensation. That was the one time I thought when we might not get through this one. She got through fine.

Laura: [8:31] We heard from another retired boat captain that the old fleet, there's something about the design of them that makes them able to fish in worse weather than a lot of other boats. Do you know why that might be?

John: [9:06] They're a wonderful design, but there's a lot of new boats that are very good too. A lot of the newer limit Seiners that they built, which are 58‑foot boats, but they're large 58‑foot boats, very beamy. They're very good boats. I've often felt maybe Schooners were slightly over‑hyped in that ability and it might just be maybe are own greed that makes them. They are a very good boat about getting you in and out. They're very fuel efficient. [9:29] One of their sea worthy qualities that we've always liked, that does make them slightly unique is we often drift at night. Meaning we just go to sleep and put the boat adrift. A Schooner will tend to put her stern quarter into the seas. She won't lay and wallow in the trough.

[9:43] The newer boats will. They'll just lay there, a lot of them. They just lay and pound like this, where a Schooner is like being in your mothers' arms or something. She just puts her stern quarter into the seas and makes for a very favorable. Yeah, they're fine sea boats.

[10:07] For their size, I know the last derby opening was in 1994 and I think there was a number of people killed in that opening and we were allowed to catch 20,000 halibut; unlimited black cod. We went to the south end of Kodiak and these were the days when if there was a storm warning you just went 'cause this was our opening.

[10:21] It was a two or three day open and we went out black cod fishing and we had tremendous black cod fishing. We were keeping the fish in the round, meaning we weren't dressing them. We were catching these great big monster black cod. Then we went in and got our halibut.

[10:38] I'm not a meteorologist, so this might not be correct. But I really had the sense that we were in the eye of the lull because the wind would box the compass. It'd be out of the west and out of the northwest and just all the way around.

[10:50] I know a number of larger boats that were fishing more towards Chirikof Island. These were crab boats. These were big boats and they couldn't fish. We got a great trip. We got in.

[11:11] Maybe our weather was a little better. I can't say, because these were good boats and there were good fishermen running these boats but when we all went into Alitak to get out of the weather. We dumped our fish at Alitak port in the south of Kodiak. We dumped our black cod off and took the halibut to Bellingham.

[11:30] There are a number of them that struck out. Maybe that is testament to the Seymour. We've had no real weather related injuries. It's been a good boat. They're remarkable boats.

Laura: [11:49] Is there anything you can tell us about being on a boat in Alaska or anything extraordinary that happened to you besides weather? Anything you've seen or experienced?

John: [12:18] Nothing extraordinary. A lot of our life long‑lining is very repetitive and mundane work. Often a lot of the color or the excitement is in the people that are on the boat, because in the end the boat's just a bunch of wood and nails. Depending on the personality and character of the crew, I'd say that a lot of the extraordinary things that have happened to me fishing have probably been more people related. [12:44] For somebody that grew up in suburban Philadelphia to meet someone like John Rosvik I've known a lot of interesting people in my family, but this was very unique for me to meet someone that grew up on this small island. Fishing was just second nature to him, just totally second nature.

[13:02] I remember one time we were getting ready to leave Seattle, and I needed a cargo net to put over one of the bins with all the gear. I was walking up to Seattle Ship to get a cargo net. Rossvik says, "John, Where are you going?" I said "I'm going to go buy a cargo net." He says "Who are you buying a cargo net for? I said "I'm going to put it on that gear over there."

[13:16] He goes "you're going to buy a net?" I go "Yeah." He goes "Do you know how to tie your shoes?" I go, "Yeah." He goes "Come here," and he was just appalled. He goes "You call yourself a fisherman, and you don't know how to make a net?" I go "No, I don't know how to make a net."

[13:34] He grabbed a chunk of buoy line and he made a homemade hanging needle, and he hung this net and he goes "It's easy, see." He showed everything to you quick. It is quite a simple knot, but it's like playing the piano, it's easy if you know how.

[13:57] We just had a lot of fun with the different guys you fished with. People I probably would have never come across. I think we want those people on the boat; you want this character on the boat. You get everybody's stories and it makes for a very interesting life. Your ability to be a good shipmate...

Laura: [14:05] Have you seen the makeup of the people on the fleet change over the 25 years you've been in it?

John: [14:10] Actually, Laura, I think it's 35.

Laura: [14:14] Excuse me. I'm doing my math wrong, 35 years.

John: [14:34] That's all right. The fleet, in a sense, has come full circle. When I started in the mid '70's it was the tail end of the Norwegian old‑timers. The average age of the fleet then was 55 or 57. I remember thinking "These guys are old as hell, I'm not getting this old... and I sure as heck ain't going to be there when I'm their age." [14:52] They'd be shuffling along the dock, and I'm thinking. Harold Samullgon  all these guys. And they all had their stories. Fisherman, we're like a mutual admiration society. There's some of them that in the regular world they really would be just viewed despicable characters.

[15:05] They've got jail records. They've got substance abuse records. They've got child support problems, and they're just heroes on a boat, because they're great guys, they're great shipmates, and you don't want a fleet comprised of that, but it lends to the character of it.

[15:30] There's something at sea where our morality and rules maybe change a bit. There's maybe a slightly different code that you live by, a more pragmatic one maybe a more accepting one. If you comply to that code it can accommodate some pretty colorful people that have checkered pasts that they sure as heck couldn't get a shore job.

[16:06] More specifically, to answer your question, Laura, it was old in '75 and it's old now. Because here we are, the once young members of the fleet, I'm in my mid 50's, Per in his early 60's, so we're getting to the tail end. It will be interesting to see how it transitions. That may be one of the trade‑offs with the IFQ Program. There might not even be a fishery if there wasn't an IFQ Program. I don't know, I don't have the answer.

[16:34] The fleet is older now. Interestingly enough, all of the things  I didn't like about it, how clannish it was, how hard it was to get in to, and how un‑accepting. I can remember asking Otto Jangaard for jobs every year. He wouldn't even respond. He would have a Lucky Strike in his mouth, and I'd say "Do you have a job?" He'd just look away. He was very cold. It was like talking to an SS officer or something.

[17:03] These Jangaards are really handsome guys. They look like movie stars.. Big lantern jaws, gray hair, trim. Very striking guys, very charismatic. They'd smoke those Luckys, they didn't have much to say. Interestingly enough, I became very good friends with them. They're slow to that. They're not salesman. They're not gushing. You've got to get to know them a little better. That's a Scandinavian thing.

[17:26] The fleet's maybe a little clannish. Getting a little inbred. It's older now. Nobody wants to get out. There's good money in it. That's why I've kind of enjoyed breaking my son in. I'd like to see more young people come into it, but they're coming in from other places too. Freezer Longliners has produced a lot of good young fisherman now.

[17:42] Back when I was young, there was all kinds of boats. There was shrimping, seining and all these different things going on. Some of them are still going on. There were more fishing jobs then, just across the fleet so you could find these fisherman.

Laura: [17:52] When you started fishing, correct me if I'm wrong, there was a mystique to fishing on these old boats. Do you think that's still there?

John: [18:18] Maybe. I'm so close and I can't see the forest through the trees. Also, you don't really want to be vain or congratulatory about it, "Oh, we were really doing this cool thing," I talked to Ed Melvin, who was the scientist that did the Bird survey, and he fishes on all kinds of boats, actually globally. [18:44] Explaining and showing him how to use these tori lines, these bird deterrents. He was on a number of big cod fish vessels. I was talking about the boat and he said, " John, when I go on these different boats in Alaska. There's skippers on these big crab boats that would come work for you as a deck hand." Within the loop, they're coveted jobs.

Laura: [18:46] They're still coveted.

John: [19:12] Oh yeah! They want them. It's a really good fishing job, especially the schooners. Per Odegard is a very fair minded guy. The Knudtsen brothers are very fair minded. The Olsens, these people all still provide really good jobs. The irony of it is we could probably just sell the Qs. Or have somebody else fish them and maybe make more money. [19:36] I always looked at it like golden handcuffs. We're doing really well. And that Rossvik  is always in the back of my mind. Because here was this guy who gave me a huge break. There has got to be bad karma or bad juju tied up with that if I disregard that. Sell the boat or lease out the Qs.

Abby [19:39] Is he still alive or is...?

John: [19:47] He's dead. He died this winter. There's going to be a memorial for him at the Leif Erickson Hall in a couple weeks.

Laura: [19:50] In a couple weeks?

John: [20:10] Yeah. December fifth I think. Or three weeks, whatever that is. Soon. Yeah, that was fun fishing with him. Those guys understood that. John understood that it is really boring. Because I asked one time I go, "Man you got it made up in the wheel house isn't it great?" He goes, "John, it's a good job but it's awfully boring." [20:34] He loved to play cards, and he would cook up these funny competitions in a card game. Or we'd salt codfish. I didn't know how to salt codfish. I'm still salting codfish for his wife. You take a white five‑gallon bucket. You fillet the fish, and you salt it. That's how they grew up. I hadn't been around that. We're eating codfish heads on that boat. I never ate a codfish head.

Laura: [20:39] What kind of food did you eat on that boat? Over the years? How has it changed?

John: [20:56] Really good food. No, it hasn't changed much, may be a little less Scandinavian. I think his idea of just this wonderful meal at the end of a trip. John would go down to the foc's'le, and he'd put the cook up on the wheel steering. [21:18] He'd light up a Pall Mall and he'd have us cut him up a cod fish. Steak of cod fish  regular grey cod, he'd put it in a pan and he'd bring it to a boil. He'd take that cod fish off, put it on a plate with one of those Wasa crackers. He'd smoke that cigarette and drink a cup of black coffee, and to him, this is as good as it gets.

[21:29] Then we'd all come down. He had all these young, blue eyed guys. "Oh yeah! We're going to put in some pizza!" and, "How about some burritos!" and he'd shake his head and laugh.

[22:01] He hated garlic. Cook it. Throw a few cloves of garlic on the stove, to would bug him, a lot of those things. We have the American palate. We eat very healthy, but we had a much broader menu. With John, I think we ate fish every day, and it was often fairly bland. It was boiled, and we had boiled potatoes every day. You could just count on that. But the food was always good, and there was always lots of it.

[22:16] That's one of the perks of being a fisherman. They feed you really well, but, essentially, you're just fueling the engine. Those guys must burn phenomenal amounts of calories. They work these 20‑hour days.

[22:36] Well, you've fished. It was great, the esprit d' corps and teamwork on a fishing boat, and I think that's like marathon running. You hate the race, but there's great gratification crossing the finish line. I know John used to tell me that. There would be all these dramas when you fished.

[23:04] You get six young men on a boat, or even throw in a woman. You get some tension going on, because there's no sleep. Maybe somebody is perceived as not working hard enough, or somebody said something about somebody's girlfriend, or something happened. There's tension, and John said, "Don't ever get caught up in that, because you get that boat full of fish, and it's like a tranquilizer." It went away like that [snaps fingers] .

[23:33] So at the end of the trip there, 48 hours before, there was going to be a fight! It's bad! It just disappears, and there's this tremendous peaceful feeling, especially if the weather is on your stern. Schooners are really nice when you've got a load on, and you've got that weather on the stern, and you're running into Seward, or Dutch Harbor or wherever you're going. The boat is just dead. People are just sleep...

[23:59] The boat is just silent except for the man on the wheel. It's just a very peaceful feeling, and I like that. I like that. Yeah, they're the things that I'd say were exceptional that I might not have experienced with this great sense of accomplishment and relief. The hard trip is over, and then the people.

[24:18] The characters we fished with. The stories you get, and there's some tremendous storytellers. Some people, they've just done all these off‑the‑wall things. You're out there rolling around on the ocean. You're part of this team, and often, no one sees each other in the winter.

[24:33] There are seldom friendships like that, but you're very close on the boat. We're this close all the time. You eat this close. If you chew with your mouth full somebody will probably say something. Or there's all these little...

[24:57] It's almost jailhouse etiquette. You have to learn what to talk about. The last guy I fired, I really fired him because he was a button pusher. He was a very good fisherman. But it was all in his head. He had to mess with people. We finally let him go. And every year he'd call for that job back.

[25:21] The year I laid him off we had a monster season. We just really crushed them. We had a huge season. He asked what we made. I told him and he gasps. It just killed him. And I wasn't trying to be vindictive, but it's such a good thing. You have to respect. You just can't cross certain lines.

[25:48] Yeah, that's pretty much life on the Seymour. A lot of it, now what I do in the winter maintaining the boat. There's sort of a trick to that. We're trying to thread the needle on maintenance where the boat's essentially worthless. You want to keep it safe and utilitarian.

[26:12] I learned that from John. We don't have TV on the Seymour. We never eat off paper plates. John, one time the cook game him some food on a paper plate and he got up and left. He said, "I didn't hire a cook to eat on a paper plate." Always eat on plates. He didn't let it slide too far. Maybe that's stupid; maybe it isn't. But that stuff's nice.

[26:42] We don't really like a TV on in the foc's'le, because I'd rather BS. I really like to talk or read. It's nice to get away from all that stuff. Now that being said, these VCRs and videos are pretty good on boats. But our guys ,we all like to talk and read. A lot of that stuff came from Rossvik and his view of fishing, his view of camaraderie and how you do it.

[26:54] But right now the boat is over in the shipyard. We're making the yearly repairs and updates. The Polaris is doing a massive project. I don't know if you've seen that.

Laura: [26:56] I saw that. Took the pilothouse off.

John: [26:57] Pardon me?

Laura: [26:59] Or they were taking the engine out, right?

John: [27:06] They took everything out. They took the fuel tanks out, which is a big job unto itself. They took the new engine and new pilothouse. [27:17] The pilothouse had been changed on the Seymour. It originally had this little doghouse. That's a very old picture. See the dories stacked up. That's how they dory fish.

Laura: [27:20] Can we get copies of this?

John: [27:27] You're welcome, I may have a copy and then I could leave it here and you could make copies and I'll pick them up.

Laura: [27:27] Fantastic.

John: [27:29] But it's very important for me to get them back.

Laura: [27:30] I completely...

John: [27:35] This one came out of the Foc's'le bar in Ketchikan. They had all the pictures of the schooners.

Laura: [27:37] I've been there.

John: [27:40] Oh, yeah! The Foc's'le, and which is no more.

Laura: [27:43] I heard that.

John: [28:11] Yeah, so they got rid of all those schooner pictures and I had a model the Seymour built by a fellow from Ketchikan. They took them five years to make it. It's a highly detailed, right down. It's got the pencil sharpener in there. We always hang up the Ballard Oil Playboy calendar. A little bit, but not. It always hangs on one part since I've been on the boat. [28:30] Since John, it's always over there by the pencil sharpener and we didn't put it on one year. It was '97 and that's the year the price collapsed. We got caught in that terrible blow. I said "We're never leaving Seattle without that calendar." When he built the model, he was in taking pictures. I said, "We're going to get that calendar in there."

[28:40] He took a picture, Miss April 2000 and shrunk it, when you look on the wheelhouse of this model and see the pencil sharpener in the chart table.

Laura: [28:42] That's nice.

John: [29:09] It's really cool. It's really nice. It thought it would be a nice heirloom for the kids because someday somebody will say, the grandkids, "What did Grandpa John do? What the Hell is a halibut schooner." Well, that's what it is and it's, he got everything right. The rollers were rollers made up of stainless steel. It's stainless steel with mild steel, which rusts. There's a piece of rusty steel. Every fitting, everything is just perfect.

Abby: [29:10] How big is the model?

John: [29:17] It's half inch to foot so it's forty inches long. Yeah, it's really cool. I really like it.

Laura: [29:24] That was very forward thinking of you, because you're right. The next generation may not know what that mean, not be any of this around...

John: [29:56] Yeah, yeah. No, things this types of stuff, I won't drag you through it. My wife's family is from Poland and they went through these unbelievable ordeals in the War. They were transported to Russia. Her grandmother died in a boxcar. Unbelievable stories and my son got them all written down. That type of ordeal actually hit both her parents, Western Poland and Eastern Poland. [30:23] They're just unreal. I couldn't even begin to relate to them. Too a much lesser extent, that's how the Seymour is. This is sooner or later the boat will , the boat will lose its relevance. Somewhere along the line might it be legislated out of the fleet. May be wouldn't be able to use wood fish hulls anymore. Or God forbid, we fall asleep and run it on the rocks. [taps table]

John: [30:55] Something will happen and that'll disappear. I'm a huge proponent of these IFQs but that was one of the bad sides that the boats that have sold out, that have checked out the Thor, and the Chelsea. These boats made a business decision, but there won't be that drives the boat out, the boat's not relevant to the fishery any longer. [31:12] We're hanging in there and there'll a number of us that do for a while yet. But we might be getting near the end with them. They're pretty old. To have an industrial platform that's close to 100 years old.

Laura: [31:27] That's exactly part of the reason why we're doing a project like this. And your boat is exactly the kind of boat that if it ever gets out of the water, would be fantastic for a museum somewhere.

John: [31:40] Yeah, but you know what I think would happen Laura? It's like the Wawana, the cod fishing schooner they had at the head of the lake of the maritime. They're very difficult to maintain.

Laura: [31:41] Really?

John: [32:01] They're impossible. They're just hard to maintain. Interestingly enough they have the original, the people, the original pilothouse. This one. Actually, I don't even know if there was a third one. There was an interim period here with that pilothouse over there. [32:21] But John took that pilothouse off the boat in the 70's because it was just leaking. He'd get out of his bunker and his feet would get wet. It was a leaky old pilothouse. But when they pulled it of, they left it intact and the Puget Sound Maritime Society got it and it was used as a ticket boot down there.

[32:40] But they called me up and said "Would you be interested in the restoration of the pilot house?" I go "Sure." And they gave me this figure of 25 grand. I'm thinking, "Oh no! I don't want to donate like five. I'll write you a check for $100 or something, or $200."

[32:53] But I go, "Why so expensive?" They go, "Well, the lead based paint, we have to do it in this." And I'm thinking, "All these years we were just like painted the thing."

They had to do everything by the book. And I said: [33:13] "No! The pilot house isn't worth that." These boats are significant, but they're not overly significant. They're not the Mayflower, the Endurance, or the Constitution. They're fish boats.

[33:20] Actually interesting enough is John really put his life into that boat, but he had no nostalgia for

[33:24] keeping old stuff off the boat.

[33:26] I go, "What happened to the old log books?"

[33:30] "Yeah, I threw them away. There weren't any fish at those places."

[33:52] I thought it would just be cool to have, you know? No. Very little sentimentality, he had a view of how this Norwegian American fishing vessel should look. And he's going to maintain that. The boat is supposed to be productive and well kept, but not frivolous. It meant nothing to him.

[34:05] I remember, one time I was talking about remodeling the foc's'le. He said, "Don't waste your money, John. Go remodel your bathroom at home or something. You'll get that money back." He goes, "The only time you ever have to remodel the foc's'le is if you can't catch fish."

[34:07] "What do you mean by that?"

[34:31] He goes, "If you can't catch fish, you're not going to get a good crew and you'll have to entice them with these." He goes, "If you catch fish, you keep the foc's'le clean, dry and make sure that the refrigerator and the stove work. And that it's a safe warm place. That's it. Nothing. Don't. It is not a yacht. Don't trick it out. That's a waste of money."

[34:56] That's been the attitude to those boats. I've grown, as I've gotten older, to just appreciate it. It's functionality. This unencumbered functionality. That if it doesn't provide production or safety, we're not really interested. We'll make concessions to comfort as it relates to the resting the crew and having them more productive.

[35:14] But all those old halibut skippers, when they would walk around the boat at night, if they saw somebody's bunk light on, that meant they were reading. That meant that they weren't working hard enough. They'd work a few more hours the next day. They're supposed to go to sleep.

Abby; [35:16] You're supposed to be so tired that...

John: [35:37] Yeah, you read in the winter? Or on the run, but while you're fishing? Wade Bassie. Did you talk to Wade Bassie? Oh, he's very interesting. And his father was outstanding. His father and uncle were outstanding halibut fishermen. Byron and Boyce Bassie. His father was Boyce, probably the best halibut fisherman in my career.

Laura: [35:38] What boat was his?

John: [35:39] The Polaris.

Laura: [35:40] Oh, the Polaris.

John: [36:04] Boyce had another boat, and I forget the name of that boat. But, when Wade's mom died, Boyce got off the water for a few years to help raise. He had a bundle of kids. Then he came back as a hired gun. He worked on the Chelsea, because he was such a great fisherman. He'd just jump on with his suitcase and go fill the boat up. He really was the best. Otto Jangaard was second. Then there was a number of Canadians. The Canadian fleet was very good. There were tremendous Canadian fishermen, outstanding Canadian fishermen. Just over the top. But Boyce, Wade's dad, got caught. He'd go back and turn the clocks ahead. He'd go, "Yeah, we're getting up at 5: [36:36] 00 in the morning." It's 1:00 in the morning and everybody goes to sleep. He'd just turn the clock ahead.

[36:43] So dinging for an hour and they'd wake up, yeah we feel pretty good. Instead of getting four hours sleep they got three. [laughter]

John: [37:06] Yeah. That spot at Umnak Island where we caught a lot of fish. We caught a lot of fish there in the Eastern Aleutians. John was really affective there back when it was hard to get a lot of fish. I said, "How'd you find this spot?" He said, I was on the Alritra a as a crewmember and they would listen to the Canadian fleet talk on a certain channel. [37:19] There was this famous Canadian boat called "The Northern Dawn." She was out with another Canadian boat way out in the Western Aleutians and they struck out. They would here them running up the chain back to Dutch Harbor and talking at night.

[37:41] Then Otto Jangaard remembers one night. He says, "I'm going to go into the Pacific side of Umnak by the radio towers. You needed good charts for that place then. But Otto new what that meant. He knew Umnak where that was. Then they saw him in Sand Point four or five days later with over 225,000 pounds, this tremendous huge fishing.

[37:47] There's no American boat that said 225,000. We couldn't them if we got them. And he got them just like that. [snaps fingers]

Laura: [37:48] Wow.

John: [38:09] That's when the Alritra a started going to that place and then John on the Seymour. For years when we fished there, we could see Otto's lights on the Pacific side of the Island and we'd be on the Bering Sea side of the Island. We got out there early before that. It became real common knowledge. It became a real worn out spot. [38:25] But we got there early and for several years, gees! We did good. Just crushed them. We'd fish right up against the kelp where it's really shallow. Right up against the reefs you can catch these big fish. That's where we caught the 1,000 fish for 90,000 pounds. They were just all big fish. There were no small fish.

[38:42] Then you'd throw them down in the ice and the ice would turn black because they were in kelp. I think they were eating the herring eggs off the kelp. And they'd be mixed in with this kelp. When you're fishing in the kelp, it's very shallow because kelp only... It's pretty shallow.

John: [38:52] John  had tremendous nerve for that to go right up against those reefs. That's how he grew up in that little island in Vigra, as a boy, fishing those islands. [38:56] Yeah, that was something.

Laura: [39:01] That was the personal best for you, that trip?

John: [39:09] Well, as a crewmember. Actually, the personal best as a crewmember was probably that 138,000.

Laura: [39:12] The 50,000 dollars. No, that was a season.

John: [39:13] No, that was on a different boat. That was the season.

Laura: [39:13] OK.

John: [39:29] That was a whole season. That was on the Unimak. That was a small boat and we had good fishing but we just did everything so shorthanded. We're paid on a share basis, so we earn a percent. So the less people you have the greater the percentage. And this guy really had it down to barebones. [39:47] They used to give us pain pills. I think they were pretty strong pain pills. Towards the end of the day you'd really be crushed. It would be "Do you want one of these pills?" "Yeah give me one of those pills." "I'm not doing this again. This is bad."

[40:07] I don't know what they were. The next day, about that fourth set, you're really falling apart. He'd rattle that bottle by John. Like, "OK." Then he'd laugh at me, call me a name. Yeah, he was a driven man, that guy.

[40:18] The personal best for the Seymour was the 138 thousand. But, interesting enough they only paid us 60 cents a pound for the fish. We just gave the fish away.

Laura: [40:21] What were they? Halibut or Black Cod?

John: [40:21] Halibut.

Laura: [40:23] Halibut at sixty cents.

John: [40:27] Yeah, 60 cents. I think this year we pushed $6 a pound.

Laura: [40:29] Wow! Yeah.

John: [40:38] That trip would have been worth like close to three quarters of a million dollars at today's prices. But in '84 the market was ... [40:54] The buyers used to get us pretty bad on that first trip. Because with the derbies we had no leverage, everybody would come flooding into town. On a Monday there was no fish on the market. A couple of days later there's 20 million pounds on the market.

[41:11] They'd shake their head and come up with some cock and bull story about, "I don't know. We'll do the best we can". With the IFQ system we now have leverage on the buyer. More appropriate leverage on the buyer than the way it was.

Laura: [41:17] Did the Seymour max out at one 138,000 or did you still have room?

John: [41:34] Oh no! We had 40,000 pounds on deck. I never heard about a Halibut schooner, any of these Halibut schooners, including the Republic and Vansea having that. The A Vansea had about 125 and that's with a big deck load. You can put about 100, 000 in the main hold if you do it just right.

Laura: [41:38] How much freeboard did you have?

John: [41:50] Not much, like none. I remember we had fish all the way from the forward break, just by the foc's'le there was about three feet of room and then the gurdy there. [42:07] And we had built these paths and it was solid fish all the way to the stern. We couldn't even open the door to the side of the pilothouse. It was just solid fish. And we were exhausted. You know, I'd froze my hand. I have small hands, and I'd frost bit my finger. My hand was all messed up.

John: [42:19] goes, "What's wrong with your hand?" I go "I think I've frostbit my finger." And typical Rossvik "I could cut it off if you want." And he would say these things with a solemn face, and I'm thinking, "I just got on the boat." [42:35] I'm thinking this crazy Norwegian would cut my hand off. I'm not saying anything again about this. I mean just shut up! I got to keep the finger, but just barely. It was pretty messed up. Yeah, John was a funny guy that way.

[42:55] I remember on the run into Kodiak we were all so banged up. One guy was urinating blood. He had herniated himself really bad. We just caught these great big. There was no end to it. There was just like a fish on every hook and they were all big. We must have shook 10,000 pounds at the end. We were just pulling these fish out.

[43:05] I don't want to toot our horn too much. All the boats had full loads that trip. It John just stepped it up in terms of how much he was willing to keep on the boat.

Laura: [43:06] Wow.

John: [43:11] He got them into Kodiak. We got into Kodiak with this massive deck load.

Laura: [43:13] I hope someone took a photograph.

John: [43:35] Somebody did but I don't have them. Antoine Larson's got them. He was John's partner at that time, another Norwegian guy. He was going out the back door as I was coming in the front. It was Antoine's last year. So we never did see pictures of it. But it was a real doozey. It was a good trip. [43:52] No, we had a lot of good trips with John. And we did have some not so good trips with John. It didn't seem to affect him. As I said, he'd never whine about anything or he didn't get involved in all that petty envy of other boats having big trips.

[44:05] We had a good one. He just felt it was our turn to have a good one. We had a bad one. He didn't feel sorry for himself or get down about it. That's fishing. They weren't there. Sometimes they're there. Sometimes they're not.

[44:24] Yeah, we'll see what happens to the boat. I know when he changed the forward mast. When they build those boats they always put a silver dollar under the mast. So he took the mast off and that silver dollar disappeared. I think he kept it. [laughter]

John: [44:53] I go, "What'd you put back?" He goes, "A quarter." So there's a quarter underneath the mast now. He was a good guy. I was lucky that way to break in with a guy like that because he was kind of getting near to be the last one. Arnie Larson was out. Per's dad was gone. They were dropping like flies. [45:15] I got caught. I think a lot of this stuff is just the roulette wheel of life or some sort of demographic. I'm in the bulge of the baby boomers and there was a bunch of us traveling around at that time that gravitated towards these alternative. I don't know if it's alternative lifestyle, just a different lifestyle. We were looking for something a little different.

[45:38] Fishing just caught my fancy and it did a lot of the other one. Paul Clampetts, Lundstsen, The Soilecus ,Hunter, we're not from traditional fishing backgrounds, none of us. So there was this big infusion. And at the same time they weren't getting the Norwegian immigrants because they've got a much better lifestyle at home with this oil money and stuff.

[46:09] There was this kind of a transition, and there was this influx of people that all had a similar story. We're not from this background, and we got into it. We liked it. Paul Clampett who had the Majestic. I don't know if you knew Paul or not. He was a scientist working for the halibut commission. He was out on the Evening Star. He had a degree in Oceanography or something, and he started looking at the Evening Star.

[46:29] These guys were working away. Figured out what they were making, and thought, "Well, I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm going to become a halibut fisherman." So he went with one of the Olsen boys, Dave Olsen. And got into it like that, and went on to become a very successful fisherman. He still is, and now he's breaking his sons in. It's funny how it shakes out.

Laura: [46:39] Did any besides Per Odegaard? Did any of the fleets stay multi‑generationally Norwegian, or not?

John: [46:41] The ownership of the boat?

Laura: [46:41] Yeah.

John: [46:50] Yeah, a number of it. Wade Bassie, who is my age. His father is a fisherman. And Eric Olsen.

Laura: [46:51] Oh yeah.

John: [47:13] Eric, Dave, and Jimmy, and the younger boy. God, my memory is going. A lot of them stayed that way. Now whether it goes one more remains to be seen. It might not be capturing the fancy of the 20‑somethings, right now. [47:34] Yeah, I'm the first non‑Norwegian owner of the Seymour. When I started fishing, that's who was on those boats. Scandinavians. May be a handful of Swedes, but mostly Norwegians. That's what they did.

[48:12] Most of them still do it. Turgessen out of Sitka. He's from that background. Most of the owners are. Marvin Gjerde, his father was a fisherman, and Steve Lindell's dad, who was one of the Bassies. Most of them came. I'm from the outside. Mark Lundtsen was from the outside. And Clampett, that went on to become halibut schooner owners and skippers, but we're still in the minority.

Laura: [48:15] Did the Jangaards stay in fishing?

John: [48:28] No. They're gone. They're out. Steve Jangaard was the last one, and he had the family boat The Cape Flattery. The thrill was gone for Steve, and he got out of it. That was quite a fishing family. [48:48] There were 12 in that family. Otto had 12 brothers and sisters. He'd say there were two crops, two mothers, and they both had six, but his older brother, Svery, was the real mover‑and‑shaker. He was the one who built countless boats. He...