❖ FISHING OFF THE GUT SCOW ❖

Friday Harbor Packing Co.
Original photo from the archives
of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

"In 1894, three men from Astoria, Oregon, Johnny Devlin, Fred Keen, and Phillip Cook, came to San Juan Island looking for a good place to start a fish cannery. They built the Friday Harbor Packing Co where the Cannery Condominiums are now, near the ferry landing. I started to work in the Friday Harbor fish cannery in the summer of 1942 when I was fifteen years old. By then its name had been changed to the Friday Harbor Canning Co.
      In those days you had to have a permit to work if you were under sixteen, and I got my permit from Howard Carter. My brother, Albert, started working at the cannery that same summer. He was only twelve at the time. Leith Wade, the superintendent of the cannery, told us that we were doing a man's work so he was going to pay us a man's wage. My mom also worked in the cannery that summer, in fact, my mom worked in canneries for 48 years.
      

A bounty of salmon
Friday Harbor Packing Company,
San Juan Island, WA.
original photo from the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

In the years when there were big fish runs, many people worked 15-18 hour days. Some even longer. Sometimes in the 1940s, there would be 100,000 fish on the floor when we came to work. The canneries, fish buyers, and purse seine boats in the northwest would all be swamped. We worked such long hours that some of the guys would not even bother to go home. They would just sleep for a couple of hours in the boiler room or on the salt sacks. When it was busy like that, people would come down to the cannery to work and help us out after their businesses closed for the day. I remember Blair King and Alfie Middleton doing that.
      In the 1930s, 40s, and the early 50s, the fishermen worked 6 days a week. They would come into the docks on Friday afternoon and would be gone by Saturday afternoon. There would be a fishermen dances at the Moose Hall every Friday night. The old Moose Hall is now the Front Street Cafe and Boardwalk Bookstore.
      In the late 1930s and early 40s, a lot of us kids would go fishing off of the gut scow. 

Young boys fishing off
the Gut Scow.
Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, WA.
original photo from
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

The gut scow was where the heads and insides of the cannery fish went. We caught a lot of herring, as there were hundreds feeding off the little pieces of fish and blood that ran off of the scow into the water. When the scow was full, the tug CHALLENGER towed it to Anacortes where the remains were ground up.
      In the 1950s we used to have freezer ships come to our cannery with frozen fish from Alaska. They would unload just so many fish into the cannery from the freezer ship so they could thaw overnight. The cannery had a water sprinkler system to thaw the fish, and then they would be canned along with what fresh fish were caught the day before in our local waters. We had to skin and bone the fish by hand, and then hand pack and can them in 1/2-pound glass jars and the jars sold for fifty cents. In 1953 Bud Murray and I started working on the Iron Chink, which is a machine that cuts the head off the fish, then cuts off the tails and fins, then slits the belly and brushes out the insides. At high speed, the Iron Chink would do 72 fish a minute."

Written by Tony Surina, Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. Courtesy of Terry Jackson, John Wade, and Wally Botsford, The Fishermen and the Fisheries of the San Juan Islands. Unknown date of publishing.