Credit: “The Dartmouth/Westport Chronicle “ used with permission -
Westport’s fishing industries examined ‘through the ages’
By Robert Barboza
Chronicle Correspondent
DARTMOUTH – Noted Westport raconteur Cukie Macomber entertained a big audience of Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society lecture attendees Sunday night with a comprehensive “then and now” talk on the fishing industry in his hometown.
Macomber looked back as far as Pilgrim days to trace the histories of all of the key catches brought in by various fishermen through the years – from quahogs and oysters to lobsters and whales – and every sort of fish in the sea.
When the 91 year-old talked about “the good old days” of the fishing business, he was referring to the 1930s and early 1940s, when he was a young man, he explained. (Despite his advanced age, Macomber was not the oldest person in the room. His friend Horace Wilkes, a regular DHAS lecture-goer, held that honor at age 98.)
Tongue in cheek, Macomber denied any first-hand knowledge of Pilgrim fishing practices, but insisted the early settlers of Massachusetts disdained lobster, which they considered a trash food.
“They were so plentiful you could walk out into shallow water and pick them up” one after another, Macomber said of the colonial-era lobster fishery. Rather than eat them regularly, the Pilgrims and later colonists used them for fertilizer in the corn fields; lobsters didn’t become regular table fare until the end of the 1700s, he indicated.
He prefaced his talk by noting how much he enjoys coming to the DHAS lecture series at the Russells Mills Schoolhouse to pass on his stories about Westport to local history buffs. Macomber noted a strong family connection to the building, recalling, “When my father went to high school, he came here... Westport had no high school at the time.”
“Fishing and farming have been the main industries in Westport” since colonial times, Macomber began. “Once, Westport had more farms than anywhere else in Massachusetts,” he said. Today, there are still a number of active farms in town, and a small but busy fishing fleet as well.
Less than two dozen commercial fishermen are home-ported in Westport, with lobsters being the biggest catch these days, Macomber said. One scallop boat still sails from Westport Point, and a number of quahoggers regularly dig in the Westport River now, he noted.
The main body of the talk started with his notes on the scallop fishery. When a young man, he would get up early and easily dig five bushels of scallops before coming in and heading to his regular job, he said. There were huge oyster beds under and around Hix Bridge that were well visited by locals until the Hurricane of 1938, which destroyed the bridge and put the oyster beds into sharp decline.
Macomber cited an 1880 Smithsonian report on the Westport River which noted those oyster beds had produced at least 50 bushels of prime shellfish each year, but were much reduced because of overfishing.
By that year, Westport’s bustling whaling industry had also been largely abandoned, Macomber noted. In previous decades, dozens of whaleships had been built and home-ported at Westport Point; among the earliest reported whaling “trips” was the 1836 pursuit of two whales spotted just outside the harbor, pursued and captured by residents in small boats, he reported.
Two decades later, Westport whalers were sailing the seven seas in pursuit of whales, on voyages that sometimes lasted years. Macomber read an excerpt of whaleship owner Isaac Corey’s simple instructions to the captain of the whaler Industry: sail to the West Indies, trying to fill 300 large barrels with whale oil... “do not return to Westport until you have a full cargo, or run out of provisions.”
By the late 1800s, handline and small net fishing for tautog, bluefish, rock bass, striped bass and various alewife species were still popular and profitable for Westport fishermen. The best catch reported by a small boat fisherman was 1,333 fish, which netted out 4,000 pounds of dressed filets, he reported.
Around the 1880s, fishermen were also using gill nets to catch menhaden, herring, and alewives in season; clams, quahogs and oysters taken from local waters were also brought to the Fall River and New Bedford markets for sale by local fishermen.
Eels were also big sellers, being caught at night with a searchlight and spear from small boats. Farmers with spare time in winter often joined the ice fishing efforts on the river, when the eel spears would be used to probe the bottom mud for the hibernating eels, Macomber recalled.
Many of the eels “were shipped out of Westport on ice, in big barrels... they were shipped up to New York,” he said, affirming “they are a terrific-tasting meal” if they are cooked right.
Macomber was also personally involved in quite a few swordfishing expeditions, first done locally from catboats, and later by motorboats carrying men in the bow with toggle-tipped lances called “an iron... not a harpoon,” he said. The iron was attached to 50 fathoms of rope and a small barrel, and thrown by hand at the fast-swimming swordfish.
“You let them run for half an hour, and they get tired; then when the keg stops moving, you take a skiff over and haul them in,” he explained. “They are very powerful, and the sword is quite sharp,” so it is a dangerous business, he noted.
In the 1960s, the swordfish went into decline, as foreign fishing fleets scooped up many of the herring that the swordfish fed on. A few fishermen still pursue the big fish for commercial sale these days.
The same fate befell the lobster fishery, an industry once so profitable that local companies were taking “millions of dollars” of lobsters per year from local waters, Macomber said. Foreign trawlers scrubbed the bottom of the coastline clean of many lobsters, and their trawls netted hundreds of lobster traps too, he noted.
The Westport-based Prelude Corp. sued the Russian government for damages caused by the state-owned fishing fleet, and recovered some damages for lost equipment, explained Macomber, who once worked for the seafood company as its head of engineering and maintenance.
At one time, before the fishery collapsed, Prelude was landing 60,000 to 80,000 lobsters per week from a fleet of four or five big boats, Macomber remembered.
Those days are long gone, but the fisheries industries of Westport are still alive and well, if on a much smaller scale than in “the good old days” of previous decades. Fortunately, historians like Cukie Macomber still remember them, and can share their memories of the local history of such industries, an important part of the fabric of our coastal communities.
Westport’s fishing industries examined ‘through the ages’
By Robert Barboza
Chronicle Correspondent
DARTMOUTH – Noted Westport raconteur Cukie Macomber entertained a big audience of Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society lecture attendees Sunday night with a comprehensive “then and now” talk on the fishing industry in his hometown.
Macomber looked back as far as Pilgrim days to trace the histories of all of the key catches brought in by various fishermen through the years – from quahogs and oysters to lobsters and whales – and every sort of fish in the sea.
When the 91 year-old talked about “the good old days” of the fishing business, he was referring to the 1930s and early 1940s, when he was a young man, he explained. (Despite his advanced age, Macomber was not the oldest person in the room. His friend Horace Wilkes, a regular DHAS lecture-goer, held that honor at age 98.)
Tongue in cheek, Macomber denied any first-hand knowledge of Pilgrim fishing practices, but insisted the early settlers of Massachusetts disdained lobster, which they considered a trash food.
“They were so plentiful you could walk out into shallow water and pick them up” one after another, Macomber said of the colonial-era lobster fishery. Rather than eat them regularly, the Pilgrims and later colonists used them for fertilizer in the corn fields; lobsters didn’t become regular table fare until the end of the 1700s, he indicated.
He prefaced his talk by noting how much he enjoys coming to the DHAS lecture series at the Russells Mills Schoolhouse to pass on his stories about Westport to local history buffs. Macomber noted a strong family connection to the building, recalling, “When my father went to high school, he came here... Westport had no high school at the time.”
“Fishing and farming have been the main industries in Westport” since colonial times, Macomber began. “Once, Westport had more farms than anywhere else in Massachusetts,” he said. Today, there are still a number of active farms in town, and a small but busy fishing fleet as well.
Less than two dozen commercial fishermen are home-ported in Westport, with lobsters being the biggest catch these days, Macomber said. One scallop boat still sails from Westport Point, and a number of quahoggers regularly dig in the Westport River now, he noted.
The main body of the talk started with his notes on the scallop fishery. When a young man, he would get up early and easily dig five bushels of scallops before coming in and heading to his regular job, he said. There were huge oyster beds under and around Hix Bridge that were well visited by locals until the Hurricane of 1938, which destroyed the bridge and put the oyster beds into sharp decline.
Macomber cited an 1880 Smithsonian report on the Westport River which noted those oyster beds had produced at least 50 bushels of prime shellfish each year, but were much reduced because of overfishing.
By that year, Westport’s bustling whaling industry had also been largely abandoned, Macomber noted. In previous decades, dozens of whaleships had been built and home-ported at Westport Point; among the earliest reported whaling “trips” was the 1836 pursuit of two whales spotted just outside the harbor, pursued and captured by residents in small boats, he reported.
Two decades later, Westport whalers were sailing the seven seas in pursuit of whales, on voyages that sometimes lasted years. Macomber read an excerpt of whaleship owner Isaac Corey’s simple instructions to the captain of the whaler Industry: sail to the West Indies, trying to fill 300 large barrels with whale oil... “do not return to Westport until you have a full cargo, or run out of provisions.”
By the late 1800s, handline and small net fishing for tautog, bluefish, rock bass, striped bass and various alewife species were still popular and profitable for Westport fishermen. The best catch reported by a small boat fisherman was 1,333 fish, which netted out 4,000 pounds of dressed filets, he reported.
Around the 1880s, fishermen were also using gill nets to catch menhaden, herring, and alewives in season; clams, quahogs and oysters taken from local waters were also brought to the Fall River and New Bedford markets for sale by local fishermen.
Eels were also big sellers, being caught at night with a searchlight and spear from small boats. Farmers with spare time in winter often joined the ice fishing efforts on the river, when the eel spears would be used to probe the bottom mud for the hibernating eels, Macomber recalled.
Many of the eels “were shipped out of Westport on ice, in big barrels... they were shipped up to New York,” he said, affirming “they are a terrific-tasting meal” if they are cooked right.
Macomber was also personally involved in quite a few swordfishing expeditions, first done locally from catboats, and later by motorboats carrying men in the bow with toggle-tipped lances called “an iron... not a harpoon,” he said. The iron was attached to 50 fathoms of rope and a small barrel, and thrown by hand at the fast-swimming swordfish.
“You let them run for half an hour, and they get tired; then when the keg stops moving, you take a skiff over and haul them in,” he explained. “They are very powerful, and the sword is quite sharp,” so it is a dangerous business, he noted.
In the 1960s, the swordfish went into decline, as foreign fishing fleets scooped up many of the herring that the swordfish fed on. A few fishermen still pursue the big fish for commercial sale these days.
The same fate befell the lobster fishery, an industry once so profitable that local companies were taking “millions of dollars” of lobsters per year from local waters, Macomber said. Foreign trawlers scrubbed the bottom of the coastline clean of many lobsters, and their trawls netted hundreds of lobster traps too, he noted.
The Westport-based Prelude Corp. sued the Russian government for damages caused by the state-owned fishing fleet, and recovered some damages for lost equipment, explained Macomber, who once worked for the seafood company as its head of engineering and maintenance.
At one time, before the fishery collapsed, Prelude was landing 60,000 to 80,000 lobsters per week from a fleet of four or five big boats, Macomber remembered.
Those days are long gone, but the fisheries industries of Westport are still alive and well, if on a much smaller scale than in “the good old days” of previous decades. Fortunately, historians like Cukie Macomber still remember them, and can share their memories of the local history of such industries, an important part of the fabric of our coastal communities.
