I sat on the boards holding a wooden caulking mallet trying to pound strands of cotton into the seams of the planks of the boat. The cotton came in long continuous strands from a bundle that lay next to me. I looped the cotton with the iron at the edge of the seam before setting it into the plank seams with a wedged-shaped caulking iron (called a “making iron”) in a series of rhythmic strokes from my mallet. For larger boats, the cotton would be topped by strands of fibrous oakum (composed of hemp soaked in linseed oil and pine tar) that also was pounded into the seams with another, more blunt-edged, wedging iron (called a “hardening iron”). When the boat was returned to the water, the wooden planks swelled and the cotton sealed the seams. The oakum prevented the cotton from rotting and helped keep it in place. It would have been a fine day because I was alone on a beach in Alaska that overlooked the vast Gulf of Alaska on a clear cold mid-May morning, except a blustery wind kept grabbing the loose cotton strands, pulling them out of the seams before I could end my full caulking run. Also my head hurt. The day before, while drilling a 3 inch hole in the side of another boat, a chunk of my shoulder- length hair became entangled in the drill chuck and was ripped out leaving a small, but embarrassing bald patch on the back of my head.
The 1982 season was my first of four in Alaska. I loved working by myself on 40 year-old wooden fishing boats that had pulled many thousands of salmon from the rich Alaskan waters. A few days before, an Arctic fox had been trotting between the boats, foraging for snacks and briefly glanced up at me while I fitted a new plank into the side of a boat. Sea otters occasionally swam by looking for shellfish and once a pod of killer whales swam into the bay of the cannery and lazily careened around the dock pilings as the cannery workers piled out of the buildings rushing to get a glimpse of these beautiful predators. The canneries still had small fleets of old wooden fishing boats that they lent to fisherman as long as they sold their catch to the cannery at a price perhaps lower than offered by others. As a shipwright, my responsibility was to repair the boats if needed. We (the shipwrights) were occasionally called out in the middle of the night for emergency repairs because the fishing seasons were very short. I remember one stormy night we pulled a boat onto the ways. It was a very short opening, perhaps no more than three days allowed for fishing, and the skipper of the boat was frantic to get his boat back into the water. As the boat rested on the ways, water erupted out of the plank seams. I stuffed cotton as quickly and thickly as possible into the seams with my mallet and iron, but could feel that the fastenings holding the planks were weak, and the seams would not likely stay sealed because of the movement of the loose planks. I promised nothing to the fisherman as he peered down from the boat railing with a look of desperation. This boat was his third, the other two having foundered during other stormy nights in the Gulf of Alaska.
My third season, I worked at a cannery on the mouth of the Naknek River in Bristol Bay and spent part of the time repairing the planks on an 80 foot slab-sided fishing scow. I also repaired some of the brightly painted purple, red and garish blue fishing boats owned by first and second generation Italian fishermen who immigrated to southern California and were under contract to fish for the cannery. They arrived with great fanfare every year cooking pasta and canned tuna in their bunkhouse rooms on hot plates and offering bribes of fish to the shipwrights so their boats would get repaired first. They often gathered in groups intently watching us work and argue loudly among themselves about how we should be doing our jobs. Back to the fishing scow- the original planks were 6 inches thick and 12 inches wide with some over 50 feet in length. The wood was cut in sawmills from old growth fir trees harvested and milled somewhere near Astoria during the 1940s when the city still hummed with 35 or so canneries processing thousands of salmon pulled from the Pacific, the Columbia River and its tributaries. We were replacing the planks with wood also milled in Astoria and harvested from the few remaining old growth stands in the Coast Range. The foreman kept shaking his head mumbling that “using clear, tight- grained fir meant for furniture showrooms as planking for a 50 year old fish scow was shameful waste”. To cut them to fit, three shipwrights held the long planks as I guided them through a massive 9 foot tall ship’s band-saw that contained a three inch wide blade. The bearings in this giant saw were recently replaced and the motor rebuilt. However, the RPMs, for some reason, were set for 2- times their normal speed so when we first turned on the saw the huge wheels and blade started rotating at an impossible speed with the bearings emitting a jet engine-like roar. The shipwrights and millwrights in the shop stopped their work and stared briefly with open mouths at the saw and then everyone scrambled for the doors fearing that the room would soon fill with dozens of lethal bearings thrown from the wheels of the saw. Some of the older shipwrights had worked in their youth on the majestic “windjammer” ships that still occasionally made sailing runs carrying lumber and grain between the Americas and other ports of call in the 1930s. They mentioned massive planks carved out of huge timbers, steamed to fit and jacked into the hull of the ship. After cutting and fitting, the heavy planks were steamed for hours to make them more malleable and rushed to the sides of the ship carried by 8 men running in tandem.
Looking down the beach one mid-spring afternoon while working on the ways, I noticed a pair of ravens flying parallel to each other and the rim of 30 foot high cliffs that bordered the beach. The male would periodically fold his wings against his body, turn belly up and drop like a stone for a few feet before recovering to continue his steady flight. This mating ritual was repeated most of the late afternoon, until a rustling of some alder branches along the edge of the cliff drew my attention. A young and apparently very hungry brown bear erupted out of the bushes, slapping branches and frantically slashing at the ravens with his paws. I wasn’t sure if his futile attempts at catching these very smart birds were out of a desperate hunger or an aggressive, in-your-face exuberance from a young bear just out of his long winter hibernation. On Kodiak Island after work, I would often walk in the tundra and hills surrounding these desolate canneries. Small lakes dotted the landscape surrounded by wild iris. I never came face-to-face with these largest of bears, but my friend Dan seemed to stumble upon angry sows with cubs throughout the summer. He vowed not to venture more than a few yards from the cannery after a particularly close visit with an aggressive female on a narrow ocean-spit near Akhiok . His mis-fortune continued when he spooked two young bear cubs near his bunkhouse and heard their mother bark a sharp warning somewhere nearby. At Naknek, one night some bears broke into the salmon egg-processing house and, like a band of thirsty sailors in a fully-stocked bar, consumed a fortune in salmon roe. During one evening walk, I pushed my way through some thick alders to the beautiful shoreline of a lake a few miles from Port Bailey and almost stepped on a large 8 inch- high by 20 inch-wide pile of steaming brown bear dung. Most of us that spend our free time roaming through nature, rarely think about encounters with large predators, but for once, my heart started racing and the hairs on the back of my neck rose and I probably experienced a sensation that pre-historic hunter/gatherers had every day as they roamed the forests and valleys in search of food. I decided to leave the lake and head home to the safety of old wooden boats and a warm bunkhouse.
