Enjoying a boat trip with buddies Lloyd and Otto Looking for bakeapples near Horwood The 'Ocean Menace' waiting to go to sea!!!!!!

My Fisherman Friend – Max

            Max reminisces about a day in his early fishing career.

“It was the early summer of 1939,” Max says “I was 12 years old and full of energy. Any fisherman worth his salt would be on the grounds by daylight. It was about three in the morning, the lamp had to be lit and the fire started to boil the kettle. My father was gone to Labrador as a skipper on the Opal Gem which was a 40 ton fishing schooner owned by Knights in Morton’s Harbour, the fishing hub of New World Island. My row boat was tied to the stage head waiting for me to untie it.”

Max continues. “The year before, someone started the fire in Luke’s Arm when everyone was gone. I went to Samson’s Island to get people to help to fight the fire. Everyone was gone to the Labrador or in the lumber woods. Uncle Sam King was the only one here. He went along with us. Uncle Sammy Butler was on his way. Most people on Samson’s Island were in the woods while Black Island people were out to their cod traps. I had learned how to run the three hp make and break engine in the 18 ft skiff with grandfather’s help.”

“The year before that, at age eleven I went to Lark Tickle on Belle Isle on the same schooner where I fished with my father Andrew. He used this schooner many years for Knights. He was a man who wasn’t afraid of work and he loved the sea. Earlier in the summer near home I’d hook lobsters off bottom to eat. There were lots of them crawling everywhere. I sold the lobsters for five cents each to Lewis Eveleigh – ten cents for extra big ones. Lewis used to sell them in Botwood for 20 to 30 cents each. Lewis also paid me 10 to 20 cents per pot for boiling them in a bark pot by the side of the stage. I used to cut the wood to fuel the fire by Black Head. Jack Peddle, Chesley Moores, Mac Butler, Pete Watkins, Jack Watkins and Elmo Pryor also trapped lobsters. I had a good many lunches with Elmo Pryor. After that Lew  Eveleigh started to tin lobster. Tinning lobster goes back to grandfather Eli’s day. Lobster traps were circular like present day crab pots. . Some lobster pots had three sides with three heads. Lobsters used to get out a lot because the heads were lower. I made one of the first lobster pots that had two heads and a parlor.”

To continue where I began, “On this early morning, I rowed out at the crack of dawn to Big Rocks which was only one km from our house. The sound of the paddles dipping in the water and the strain of the whit on the tholepin was the only thing that broke the silence as the eastern sky began to show signs of a rising sun. In the distance a faint sound of another fisherman closing his stage door could be heard.   After a few minutes I reached the eastern ground having barely enough light to make out the land marks.”

“It was much easier now to locate the grounds because years before as a boy I spent many days out in punt with grandfather Eli or my father jigging for cod and trawling in the fall out in the trench in 200 fathoms of water. They dried the fish and sold it to Knights in Morton’s Harbour. Other people who had trawls out were Austin Poole, Arthur Anstey, Bobby Canning, Gus Pryor, Charlie Moores. Many people like Hedley Rideout, Arthur Anstey, Jim Philpott, my father Andrew and Alphaeus Rideout usually went to Labrador. Many people went out killing “bull birds” in the fall and seals in the spring.”

“Well, that morning I tried all the grounds around Big Rocks and Cottles Island. I located them by lining up two marks on land in one direction as well as two in another. These marks are in my memory to this day.  It was useless to use bait since the fish were glutted with capelin, which come inland every June to spawn. The jigger hardly reached bottom when there was a thug on the line. Number one, which was the right size for the splitting table, was soon in the boat. I gutted the fish as they came over the gun-wall and when the punt locker was full I headed for the wharf.”

“By seven o’clock the fish were in the stage. The floor and splitting table were ‘sloused’ with water. The half barrel tub was filled half full with buckets of sea water. The heads were taken off and the fish pushed up against the cleat on the table – there was a cut from neck to tail along the sound bone with the left ‘mitted’ hand holding the fin. Then grasping the backbone as the square topped knife with a slight curve in its blade hooked in the rear part of it and with a quick jolt it sliced the bone away from the meat and ‘eureka’ there was spitted fish. The fish were thrown in the tub of water and the bone ended up on the floor.”

“After all the fish were done the blood was thoroughly washed off in the tub with additional water added. Each fish was carefully embedded in coarse salt in a pile along the stage wall. Here it had to cure for 10 days. Then it was up to the house where mother  had prepared a bowl of steaming hot porridge and a cup of tea. It was only a few days left in the school year and the quicker it was over the better.”

“My mother, Ena, was a person who gave encouragement and wanted me to learn how to make it in life” Max says. “She insisted that the family learn how to read and write because it would help get ahead. No one knew better than she did that making ends meet with a family in outport Newfoundland was a challenge. Learning the ropes at an early age increased the chances of survival. Through the years in her memory she could recall those who quit in despair and moved to other parts of Newfoundland and even to mainland Canada. To watch her sons leave home was the last thing she wanted to hear. Having a few cents to jingle in the pocket was the desire of man and boy alike. However making that happen wasn’t easy especially when there wasn’t much money on the go. A young person who wasn’t willing to do some daily chore was almost unheard of.”

This morning was only one of the many that would see Max on the move for many years thereafter. His mind was always thinking ahead. Making a living in a fishing community was no easy task. But he was up for it.

Max Anstey was born September 24, 1926. That was the very night Fred Poole, Austin Poole’s father, was drowned just off Big Rocks. Apparently he fell over while steering the boat. He was never seen again. Max’s people were some of the first people to settle in the place because his grandfather, Eli Anstey, was the first baby born in Cottles Island, now Cottlesville. Eli, whose parents came from Twillingate, fished  all of his life. Father, Andrew, also fished for all his life except for an occasional winter and spring on the ‘haul off and drive’ in the lumber woods which supplied the paper mills in Grand Falls.

Max got married at age 19. It was during that year that they built their own 45 foot 40 ton schooner, Audrey Vera. Andrew, Eli, Bobby Canning and Max cut the timber on Chapel Island. The plank was sawed in Andrew’s sawmill by Black Head. They used a four hp stationary International. Back then everything was sawed locally for houses, boats and any other structure. Some of the timber was cut by ax and buck saw on Cottlesville side of Summerford pond. It was then pulled out by horse to Little Harbour and brought home by boat. They started to build it in the fall and launched it late in the spring. That year they went to Crouse on the Northern Peninsula and the next year to Pack’s Harbour, Labrador. The crew was Andrew, Max, Matt Wall and Everett Wall from Bridgeporte and Ron Philpott who was the splitter. For years the fishery was worthless and the Audrey Vera was used to carry limestone from Cobb’s Arm to Botwood for the Grand Falls paper mill but was sunk on Knight Island Rock with a load.

After he got married, he ran Arthur King’s passenger boat for 2 or 3 years. For the first year he used his grandfather’s 18 foot boat with the three hp Atlantic engine. Max spent his entire lifetime fishing at least for some part of the year. He always fished lobster in the spring right up through life. For three years from September to November he cut wood with buck saw in the lumber woods. He went in with Reg Peddle and Lloyd Watkins who was cook. He did spend one winter at age 19 loading wood on tractor sleds in Badger.

“I built a 22 ft boat with a 7ft beam in my basement and put an 8 hp Lister diesel in it, the first one on the island,” he says. “Henry Jennings had the first one in Bridgeport. We sold our fish to Ashbourne’s and Manuel’s in Twillingate.”

“In the spring we’d go after the herring in skiff using seines. We sold them pepped and salted to Lewis Eveleigh. Samson’s Island and Basin Tickle was a good place to get them. The skiff and punt were used to put out bar seine. When we worked in the factory we’d pep a barrel in two hours on Factory Island for 65 cents per barrel. Hubert and Norman Anstey worked there as well. Of course the herring had to be salted in barrels.”

“In June month when capelin came, codfish were glutted. It was no good to use a trawl so we had to use a codtrap. Capelin were good for the potato ground, baiting trawls, drying for pigs and human consumption. They were caught by cast net or seine – usually cast net. Gus Pryor, Eli Anstey and Arthur Anstey had seines.”

“I put out my first gill net about 10 years after I got married. Me and Norman went up to Gleed’s Island in Mr. Moore’s Berth. It was the first one put out in the bay. Ammy Jennings and Saw White put one out the next day on Green Island. We pulled our trawl in the morning and Norm took the fish to Twillingate. While he was gone I got the gill net ready. They were English nylon nets – first time I saw nylon. When we pulled them the six inch floats became the size of two inch cotton reels. Pretty blue floats. It was so full of fish that it floated up from me to Norm. We nearly got a fright after pulling a 10 line trawl with half a barrel of fish.  Great big fish, “flousing” their tails – I can see them now, nearly. Biggest kind. 4 or 5 barrels. We gutted them and carried them to Twillingate and were back before dark.”

“We pulled the nets two times each day until the fall. Collectors came after a while. We got a few turbots as well and shipped to Ern Lambert. Austin Poole got a gill net a month after and it got twisted up so bad that he never got it cleared out. They used stiff white nylon rope. One boat towed the other around to take try to take the kinks out. The “Japs” made better rope than the English. We used Javex bottles. Bottles would break with a bang, you’d almost jump overboard. True as I’m here I saw a steel float turn right in. A leaky bottle wouldn’t break, floats same as rock. We came in to get some steel floats. We put little plastic floats in nylon bags and they used to pop through a small mesh. They’d get big again when they came to the surface. Everyone was amazed. We hauled up a bottle of Jockey Club one time. Someone drank it. It never broke. I suppose the steamers threw it over. We’d haul up knob after knob of burned coal. Reg White had the third gill net and one of the Jenkins in Summerford had one too. By the next year – there were hardly any trawls. “

“Eric Dean came from Trinity Bay in long liner with “gourneys”.  With gill nets in the run he would catch big turbot but they had good floats. They had 2 or 3 years in Trinity Bay and ran out of fish up there. Norm Flight was with Eric Dean.”

“Me and Norm did much better than anybody else ‘compared’. Norm went ‘on his own’ the next year. I built my 22 foot boat. I went off Black Island and Norm stayed in the run. Two or three years we did this. Then the 38 foot Nancy A was built in Twillingate and we had two fleet of 40 gill nets. We had over 100 gill nets. This was the first long liner along with Fred Flight’s Terry Maurice. Seven were built in Twillingate that year. Don Young was the master builder. It was Harry Hill, Cyril Anstey and me first year with no “gurdy”. Three of us rolled on deck in a nice breeze of wind.  Then we put a car rim attached to its rear end on the deck. Angus Godden made the first one. Then we could have several hauls using the hydraulic hauler. Get one end and get other end. Cyril stayed for two years. Then Jerry Watkins came and Everett Peddle. We fished on a shoal 12 to 16 miles off. We had the Nancy A for four years. Nancy A had a small seine for capelin which gradually became a bigger part of the fishery. My son, Rex, was on the Nancy A and then on the Bay Queen. The fish became scarce and the price was low. Rex then went Labrador City.”

“This 50 foot Bay Queen was built by Co-op in Fogo. There were seven built there. Jerry and Everett left but David Perry was there for two or three years. In August and September we would go for mackerel using a 100 foot bar seine which was 6 fathoms deep. The tuck seine was 50 feet – ½ size of other.”

“The Bay Queen fished Cod (1/2 to ¾) later turbot, grey sole, flounder, halibut from Funks to Wesleyville. We’d put out our fleet and stay on them and then take up. Or come in one day and go out the next. We did this for two years. We had no stabilizers and it was a lot of rolling. We did have radar and would get a reflection off a buoy within a mile and sounder to indicate dept. This along with the compass and time helped us locate the gear. In the Bay Queen we seined capelin beginning in St. Mary’s Bay in May and followed the capelin around to Conception Bay, Trinity Bay, Bonavista Bay and back home to Notre Dame Bay in June. We shipped capelin to whoever was on the wharf where we landed.”

Max gave the Bay Queen to his boys when he was 65 and he gave up his lobster license. Later he bought another lobster license before giving it to his son Trevor. In 1992 the cod fishery failed. The young men fiber glassed the boat ready to pursue the crab fishery. Then they bought a bigger boat and called it the Ocean Menace. The lucrative crab fishery soon became depleted and in 2005 it was too big of a risk to travel off the 200 miles in such a small boat. As of today this boat is tied to the wharf as the boys try to find jobs on land as far away as Alberta.

Max occasionally strolls down to the wharf and listens as the boat squeaks quietly against the side of the wharf. He tips of his cap, stares out over the harbour and then slowly walks back to his home wishing he was young again to give it another try. He makes his escape on his quad into the countryside when he can catch trout and pick berries. In the winter he’s on the snow machine cutting wood, snaring rabbits or catching fish through the ice. He also gets his share of white fish. Even at his age there is not a dull moment.

                Max takes great pride in realizing that he provided for his large family. Talk to any of them today and they’ll acknowledge it.

- Written by Victor Cassell