Schooners on the Bay Transcript
- [Fisherman] I wouldn't trade one sunrise for 50 sunsets. Sunrise is the beginning of a brand new day. Sunset is the end of the whole thing. [Fenton Anderson] -And you're going in various locations down the river and out in the Bay, you see young ducks and young geese and seagulls, and you see enough things to keep you entertained on the trip.
- [Narrator] From towns and villages along the Maurice River in Southern New Jersey, men have been going up the Delaware Bay in wooden boats for over 150 years to catch oysters. ♪ Oh, this is my story ♪ ♪ This is my song ♪ ♪ Praising my savior ♪ ♪ All the day long. ♪ ♪ Oh this is my story ♪ ♪ This is my song ♪ ♪ Praising my savior ♪ ♪ All the day long ♪ ♪ Oh this is my story ♪ ♪ This is my song ♪ ♪ Raising my pay here ♪ ♪ All the day long ♪ ♪ Whoa this is my story ♪ ♪ This is my song ♪
- [Donald Rolfs] Bivalve on the Maurice River here in southern New Jersey is the center of the oyster fishery and has been for a century or longer. Bivalve used to be filled with all sorts and manners of sailing vessels used to harvest the oyster out in the Delaware Bay. It was a a thriving community and this river was once lined with so many sailing vessels. It looked like a forest of masts for at least a mile up and down the river. The railroad came to Bivalve in the 1870s, which made it even a more flourishing community. And there were probably five or 600 sailing vessels at the turn of the century working these docks and sailing down these waters out to the bay, looking for that elusive oyster laying in the mud at the bottom of the Delaware Bay. Oystering really is similar to farming in many respects, while the farmer on land plants the seeds in the ground, the the oystermen goes up to the upper reaches of the Delaware Bay where the tiny little oysters grow naturally and then he harvests them. He dredges them up out of the bay and he brings them up to the work boat deck. He sorts them out and then he carries them to the lower part of the bay, dumps them back into the water where they go down to rest on the bottom of his oyster grounds. And there they grow. Many of the old time oyster skippers used to feel there was a real relationship between nature and the sailing vessel. After all, the force or the power behind the boat was natural. It was the air or the wind. They felt that it was a natural conservation measure of sorts. When there was no wind, you couldn't go to the bay. If there was too much wind, you couldn't dredge the bay. And there always seemed to be that kind of feeling between the good Earth and the good vessel. When the vessels were no longer used under sail, some of the old captains felt a real loss.
- [Fenton] The Martha Meerwald was built in 1909. It was built by Harry Stillman really, but it was built for Augustus Meerwald and he named the book Martha Meerwald. And I don't know whether it could have been named after his wife or his daughter. I know he had a daughter named Martha Meerwald. The Martha Meerwald is a 65 foot boat in length. It is 19 feet wide and the depth of the hole is five and a half feet. It is a typical New Jersey oyster boat. It's built fairly low to the water. It carries a very big load for the size. In fact, there are boats around here which are called big little boats. In other words, they look small and they are small, but they will carry a load as great as some other boat that might look larger to you. And this is one of them. I bought the Martha Meerwald in 1936 and it was converted to power in 1945. Well, when we changed the Martha Meerwald sail to power, we removed the mass, bowsprit, booms, and gas and other necessary paraphernalia. I didn't particularly like it at the time. It was a necessary thing. It was done during the war in 1945. In fact, and as you know, most of the young men going off to war and crews were hard come by. With sailboats you put in terribly long days at times when there was proper breeze up to 16 or 18 hours a day. With a power boat the longest day we have now is about eight hours. The dredges are allowed to go overboard and drag on the bottom for about from two minutes to five minutes, whichever you determine it is the correct time. And with a crew operated boat, you arrange that amount of time that you drag these dredges to the speed of the amount of men you have, separating oysters from shells and stones and crabs and fish and any other debris that might come up there. And any operation, if an oyster has a shell attached to it, you knock, knock the shell off in an attempt to wind up with all oysters. A captain and a boat are probably one thing, a captain if he's had a boat will say for 10 years knows exactly what this boat will do in various weather conditions. This boat just seems to have been the one for me. I'm very happy with it. A good bed of oysters is a beautiful thing to oysterman. It's almost like gold, not from the money standpoint, but the very fact that you have created this thing. And most oystermen get a feeling for what they are doing. Of course the end result is the money comes from it. But there's other compensations besides that.
- [Donald Rolfs] New Jersey built in this area some of the most beautiful sailing schooners that we have ever seen. The technique and the ingenuity of this craft basically was brought from Europe in the days of early American ship building, but it was also used here in the 18th and 19th centuries up and until 1930s these beautiful schooners were used for the oyster trade in the oyster fishery. No one knows exactly how the schooner was named, but it's legendary that in New England one of these vessels was for the first time built with a four and a half rig and it fit the water so well, almost like a sailing sculpture, it just was so graceful that someone was heard to exclaim there she schoons. And the term schooning was identified with this kind of boat, which is two masted has a a long bow sprit a beautiful shape and has a great base or a hull to be used as a work boat as well as a fast ocean going sailer. These vessels were well suited for oystering out in the Delaware Bay, which is shallow as we know. And so the boats were built to sail in shallow water. They were, they were very wide and beamy and were very, very stable. They offered a stable floating working platform. That's what you could say for the oyster fishery. But they never lost their very trim and beautiful lines even though they were work boats.
- I'm 20 years old and there's another guy that started running a boat this year called Bobby Robbins and we went to school together and we graduated. So us two are the youngest on the river. I've always liked being around the water. I've always been crabbing, and different things on my summer vacations and whenever I had the chance I was on the water and my brother become a captain. The man that taught him was George Barry. He's passed away now, My brother taught me different things, how to dredge, and where we both worked for the same company, packing company. Machinery that you would that I would have like dumper doors and things like that's something that we use to dump the dredges with. It's an automatic, you don't have to use no man. I have radars and the rams and different electronics, were expensive, but they're nice to have but you can do without 'em where a man working for himself might wanna put his money more, keeping his boat in shape than worrying about having electronics. Column machine is a thing that separates the oysters from the shells. Goes in off these two belts, what we call feeder belts into your column machine. I rig called the finger rig. It carries the oysters up through there into these slots. The shells fall through the slots into to a chute that runs them back overboard and the fingers carry the oysters into the next belt called the stacker. Column machine really does quite a job. I would say it covers 90% of the separating or better. The one that I don't know that has a column machine now is Fenton Anderson. Far as I'm concerned, I haven't seen it bother his catch none 'cause he really does good. I think what's appealing about a wooden boot is just where such an old object and the way it's shaped, it's an art, the way that people build 'em. It's just something people don't do no more. Is build a wooden boat.
- I got into a ship building when I was just a boy. At that time if you is old enough or large enough, either one, there's something to do. You went to work. The first jobs that I had was really cleaning the chips and saw dust and things out of the bilges. At that time the old people really wouldn't tell you anything, you had to observe in order to learn. They were afraid if you got good at it they would lose their job as either, you know, layout man or planking and those different things in a boat. But through working at it that way, I eventually got so that I got to do some lofting on the floor and things. And later on I got into the boat building and shipwright business on my own. I purchased the shipyard in Mauricetown in the early forties, which I had bought at that time just to have, to build a home on. And when I bought the place I'd been working the shipyards and all. And the first thing I did, foolishly, I got the railway operating. It had been operated by horsepower. But then Harry Stillman in about 1924 had done away with his horse and put an auto gasoline engine in there to operate the machinery. And I got to working with that, fix the cradle up. And the next thing you know, I was hauling boats too and I was in the shipyard business. But the shipyard work. It's interesting, you start with a pile of, well we call it flitch lumber with a bark on just slab sawed. You lay your vessel out from your model, you get your patterns, you go to your fitch pile, you cut your frames and things, set your keel, and build the boat. And when you get done, there is a satisfaction. I think it's just, I don't know whether it's like an artist with a painting or some sculpture and all, but when you do get done, you've started from something that is bark on and you wind up with something that is finished and you're proud of. Wooden boats today, they can't get the wood and the materials and the men with a knowhow and there's really only one yard left here that does repairs or rebuilding wooden boats. The steel boats, the average life in them is maybe 12 or 14 years where the wooden vessels, we have some here now that going into their second century of use,
- [Speaker] Well we have to haul it out at least once a year on the railway and scrub the bottom, cork the bottom, and paint it with copper paint. And if there's any iron work underwater at that time you would repair anything of necessity.
- [Speaker] A good shipyard worker that has been around where they've been constructed knows how they are built. This is one of the biggest things that I think as far as having a good crew of means concerned means because if a person don't know where the stopwaters are, they don't know where the bolts are, they don't know how a shaft out is constructed, then you're in trouble because they can do you more damage than they do good. The same way with a lot of the boats today, even we've had 'em where we've raised them up in the air and the keel literally would fall out because the bolts had rusted off, the water pressure had been keeping it up, but yet they'd been leaking. Caulking is a one of the biggest things that a wooden boat has to be done. That part in the shipyard used to be real pleasant when they had a crew to work on 'em with the caulking mallets, some of 'em would actually pretty near play a tune, but that is nearly a thing of the past today. [Fenton Anderson]- Years ago they didn't talk about hauling the boat out. They talked about hauling the man out. And one guy met another one They said, "well they hauled Jim Cobb out this morning." and the other guy says, "Was he leaking?" "No, he never leaks." And well he said, "what'd they do?" "What did they do to the boat?" Well they, he said "they hauled Jim out and scraped his bottom and painted it and then put him back overboard."
- Welcome to our party. You're present at the launching of the first oyster boat on the Maurice River in 51 years. And we're very happy to have our friends here with us today to witness this great occasion. This will be the launching of the first new boat, I say in 51 years. Also the first steel boat that's been launched for the New Jersey oyster industry. Now I'm gonna ask a very nice lady to come up here accompanied by another nice lady, both of which are closely aligned with me. One my mother, Mrs. Ada Morgan who's come here accompanied my wife Claire. We're gonna have to hit it right here somewhere with both hands and hit it hard and let me move. Anytime you want. Hit it hard. Boat's 75 feet long, 21 feet wide and draws six feet of water. Constructed a quarter inch and five 16th steel. And is the state of the art as far as oyster business is concerned,
- [Speaker] When you build your first boat, when you put it over a launching day, it is christening. And that's usually done with a bottle of wine unless somebody's a double TCU. And I've been known to use water, which they consider is bad luck.
- The Samuel C Jacoby, which I owned for several years and sailed. While I had to boat one of the oddities was I was working above Ship John in the channel area, which was rough. The wind was against the tide and some of my crew had been in a four peak, came back and told me that the boat was breathing. So I had one of the men take the wheel and I went down and looked. When the boat was down in the sea, it was just perfectly tight, but when it raised up, the bow would open up like an old fashioned pocket book. So I wound the dredges in and went carefully as I could into Cohansey and laid there until weather moderated and went to the shipyard and had to put a new stamin apron into the boat, which is what you can see today. But as far as putting a boat in the coffin is concerned that term there is usually when a boat, it needs repair work, needs re fasting, needs caulking and all, they'll cover it with say, a cheap sheet iron, which they can get maybe a year or two more work out of it before the metal rust out. And then they throw the boat away. Of course then the boat is what they called "dead". At one time they used to take some of 'em off shore and use 'em to make fishing reefs with, off of Cape May. But the majority of 'em are laying along our shores, the keel, centerboard, trunks, some of the rudder posts and things can still be seen today. But it was the Depression that really did away with most of our fleet. But we had several hundred boats at that time that either left here or did sink merely because of the Depression. Some were good vessels, some weren't worth saving. The Isaacs Evans was here on the Mauricetown on the shore and it had been abandoned 'cause things was hard times in the middle thirties, right in the middle of the Depression. And it was purchased by the Newcomb brothers, which had me go there, pump it out and raise it and rebuilt the stern and top sides on it. The vessel was built in the shipyard in the 1883 and it's still going now sailing in Camden, Maine. The people that actually own it at the present came down looking for a boat for charter. And I knew the Isaac Evans was for sale at the time. They bought the vessel and I helped them get the fittings for the sails and the rigging, dead eyes, and things. And they took it to Maine and these people raised the decks about three foot and did it by pulling it out on shore on a cradle and put it overboard and had it sailing the following year, which was, to me, was quite a feat for them to be able to do it.
- Linda and myself looked around for a schooner to rebuild and to put in the Maine Windjammer business, 'cause we realized that without a whole lot of money to build a new vessel, you, the only economic way to do it was to rebuild an existing hull. We had heard about the vessels in New Jersey, the oyster schooners. We started tearing things apart and lo and behold, we found we didn't really have very much. Had a nice idea, and over the next 18 months we ended up completely rebuilding the vessel, what they call a "comprehensive paint" job sometimes that's where you start scraping the paint on the inside and when you get to the paint on the outside, you start replace all the wooden and paint both sides, that sort of thing you see. But we ended up reframing the vessel, new keel, most of the outside planking, all the inside planking, deck beams, deck, of course, cabin houses, and whatnot, were not saveable. Well, she's a marvelous vessel. She is a coasting schooner, she's not a cup defender. Gaff rigger got tremendous amount of power there and she'll go quite fast. She'll go, this vessel, I've had her going 10 knots off the wind, you feel like you're going a hundred miles an hour and just white foam everywhere. And she handles really well. She's a center boarder and of course your spin on a dime, you, she'll point quite well. And she keeps up with a lot of vessels, a lot bigger than she is too. She's 65 feet and some of these vessels are pushing a hundred feet. And it's amazing the Isaac Evans can hold her own.
- I could say that all of the Isaac Evans is original because she's still the same boat. She's still the Isaac Evans, but in terms of pieces of wood that are in her that were in her when she was originally built, there is almost no way of telling. Once a piece of wood is 30 years old, you can probably not tell it from something that's a hundred years old if it's sound. She's not a museum in that she's not faithful to anything other than herself. In the process of carrying people though, there's something about being an old wooden boat that lends itself towards being much more of a museum than most museums are because there's an essence about her of being a boat, being a schooner, being sailing. She's not an oystering museum okay? But she is a museum in the sense that she's a working schooner.
- [Speaker] The Riggin was built in 1927 in Dorchester, New Jersey. It was designed by a fellow named Parsons who designed more than just the J&E Riggin. In New Jersey, the J&E Rigin, I guess enjoyed a reputation as far as sailing was concerned as to being practically unbeatable. They have said that, you know, she actually never had been beaten in the actual race down there. She won the, the Great Schooner race that they had in New Jersey in 1929, which was the only schooner race that they had. I guess the Depression put an end to such frivolous activities as racing oyster boats and so forth, but we have a a Windjammer race of our own up here, which we've had for the last several years and so forth. And in our particular class that we race in, we've won that a couple of times of those five. So we still, we still feel that she's fast, and as far as I'm concerned, she seems to be getting faster. ♪ Well I relate my story you oystermen give ear ♪ ♪ Jacoby's fading glory you presently shall hear ♪ ♪ Give me your attention and you will plainly see ♪ ♪ That the Eloise Amore can beat the Samuel Jacobi ♪ ♪ Ring, ring your bells at the dawning ♪ ♪ of the day ♪ ♪ The Amore is the fastest boat around ♪ ♪ To sail The Delaware Bay ♪ ♪ Oystermen ring your fog bells ♪ ♪ To let the people see ♪ ♪ that the Eloise Amore can be the Samuel Jacoby ♪ ♪ We were going up the Delaware as though we had no wind ♪ ♪ When the Eloise Amore had to take her topsail in ♪ ♪ We arrived at Philadelphia ♪ ♪ We harbored there all night ♪ ♪ And the Samuel Jacoby arrived at first day light ♪ ♪ With this I'll end the song ♪ ♪ And I hope it wasn't long ♪ ♪ But we can beat the Samuel Jacoby ♪ ♪ Each time she comes along ♪ ♪ Singing ring, ring your bells ♪ ♪ At the dawning of the day ♪ ♪ The Amore is the fastest boat around ♪ ♪ To sail the Delaware Bay ♪ ♪ Oystermen ring your fog bells ♪ ♪ To let the people see ♪ ♪ That the Eloise Amore has beat the Samuel Jacoby ♪ [John DuBois] - The Jersey boats were full from far aft. They were very comfortable. They were just a good all around work boat. They made a nice platform as far as the work was concerned.
- [Fenton Anderson] Well, wooden boats, they creek and groan and do all kinds of things same as humans do and that's one of the reasons they talk of them as being alive.
- [Todd Reeves] -I think what's appealing about a wooden boat is it's such an old object, the way it's shaped, It's an art, the way that people will build 'em. And it's just something people don't do no more. Is build a wooden boat. You can rebuild 'em, but you never see one being built.
