❖ FISH TRAPS ❖

A trap on a serene day
Postmarked 1925.

FISH TRAPS

"In the last few decades of the 1800s, many salmon canneries were being built in a tri-county area consisting of Whatcom, San Juan, and Skagit. By 1900 we had two of the largest salmon canneries in the world. These were Pacific American Fisheries (PAF), the largest located in Fairhaven, and Alaska Packers Association (APA) located in Blaine.

Pacific American Fisheries*
purchased Eliza Island,
Bellingham Bay, WA, in 1899.
They built a new cannery on-site without
fresh water on the island, so from
1900 to 1930 they changed plans
and operated a shipyard to build smaller vessels
& fishing equipment.
Marine ways & pile drivers in view.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

P.A.F. Cannery
Fairhaven, Whatcom County, WA.
from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

P.A.F. painting crew.

There was a job for everyone 

as the author writes in the last paragraph.

Photo from the archives of 

the Saltwater People Historical Society© 

Alaska Packers Assoc.
Blaine, Whatcom County, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

A.P.A.
Point Roberts, Whatcom County, WA.
The pile driver is in view, left of center.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Other canneries, some of them quite large were being built in Anacortes and Friday Harbor.

Apex, Sanitary Fish, FIC
Canneries lined the waterfront of
Fidalgo Island, Skagit County, WA.

Manhattan Packing, 
On the other side of the Straits in Port Angeles,
Clallam County, WA.
Litho photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      In order to supply these canneries a large number of salmon needed to be caught. The salmon certainly were available in large numbers. The solution was the use of salmon traps, commonly known as fish traps. Most of the traps were owned by the canneries, but there were a few independent owners. The traps were very efficient; the salmon in most cases came into the traps in large numbers. All the canneries had to do was take the fish out of the traps and into the cannery to be processed. The traps did, however, need a lot of material and equipment to put them in and take them out.

Trap fishers at work
Click image to enlarge

      The traps consisted of four parts: the lead, heart, pot, and the spiller. The lead was a line of piles driven about ten to fifteen feet apart in a straight line across the tidal stream that carried the salmon. On this line of piling, the wire was attached from high water to the bottom. These leads were designed to lead salmon into deeper water and into the heart. By law, they were limited to 2,500 feet in length. The heart was web hung on piling and led the salmon to a funnel-shaped tunnel about ten feet on the outside, to a much smaller one on the inside.
      This tunnel led into the pot where the salmon couldn’t find their way out. The pot was a huge bag hung on pilings about forty feet by forty feet and deep enough to hold up to 70,000 salmon. It was made out of heavy-duty cotton web heavily tarred. By law, the pot could not be over 65’ at low water. From the pot, the salmon were turned into the spiller, a bag much like the pot but smaller. It had a large apron-style brailer that was used to roll the salmon onto scows. The power for this brailer came from the trap tender. The men it took to brail the salmon usually came with tender or sometimes they stayed on the beach in shacks. Eight to ten men were needed. The trap tenders were more like tugs and usually had small fish holds because most of the fish went into scows for transport to the canneries.

Tender and scow 

Returning with salmon,

calm water, and a big crew.

Click image to enlarge.

Low res scan from an original photo

from the archives of 

the Saltwater People Historical Society.© 

      The equipment used to install the traps in the spring and take them out in the fall was extensive and expensive. They needed pile drivers, pile pullers, rigging, scows, web yards, sheds, and of course, tugboats and scows. The pile drivers used were usually with 80’ gins and three-ton drop hammers. They were all steam-powered. The high gins were needed because many of the piles they drove were very long. To drive in 65 feet you need a pile sometimes 100’ depending on penetration. Many of the pile drivers had sleeping and eating accommodations aboard, all the comforts of home along with bedbugs and other cooties.
      Once the pilings were in, the rigging scow took over to hang the wire and web. The pile pullers were only needed in the fall to extract all the piles driven and to store them. Many were stored along the outside beaches at San Juan Park, at Jakle’s Lagoon and also in Mitchell Bay. They were still there two decades after 1934. Friday Harbor Packing Co had a web house and a web yard on what is now called Web St. Here they tossed the web and built parts they needed to build the traps and to store them during the offseason.

"Fish traps on the west side
of San Juan Island"
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
As inscribed verso.
Photographer unknown.
Photo from the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      The most important thing to have a successful salmon trap was its location. They needed to be placed where large numbers of salmon passed by and where it was possible to build the traps. They needed shallow water shorelines that dropped off gradually. Shorelines that dropped sharply in water 65’ were out of the question. It so happened that the Salmon Bank at the southeast end of San Juan Island was ideal. The bank runs one and one-half nautical miles south to a navigational buoy, from there it curves back towards shore, but at the same time continues westward to Eagle Point.
      Friday Harbor Packing had traps in this area along with the giants mentioned earlier, PAF and APA and others as well. There was a trap west of Eagle Point at False Bay. This trap belonged to independent operator Henry Cayou. This trap was a big producer of King salmon. Henry had a Salish mother and had that I ate understanding of the characteristics and movement of salmon. This made him a great fisherman. He was also a wise businessman and an all-around fine gentleman. He had other traps in other locations as well.
      One further up Haro Strait at Deadman’s Bay, and another one at Mitchell Bay owned by Cayou and Haroldson. There was also a trap at Battleship Island that was put in by an Anacortes outfit, probably Lowman’s Coastal Fish Co. The tidal currents were so strong there it was very difficult to install or to keep in place. It was a big disappointment because it mostly caught Humpbacks. The canneries at that time didn’t keep this species. Next in line was a trap at John’s Island, owner unknown to this writer. There were many more traps in the area, too many to list here. The traps mentioned were typical of them all and were close to home for the people living on San Juan Is.

Trap watchman's shack .
Low res scan of an original photo,
pre-1912, from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      These were exciting times with men taking big risks to get in on the action. A few of these men who should be mentioned were the fish pirates that wanted to dip into the spiller and dip in they did. Each trap had a watchman who stayed in a little shack right on the trap in most cases. He was to watch out for predators and junk getting fouled in the tunnel. Some of the predators were very tough characters. They didn’t want to hurt anyone, they just wanted some fish. Men like Spider Jones offered bribes of money to watchmen so they would just turn their heads. Some others like “Dirty” Dick, were more threatening, as in bodily harm. Still, others had made their deals with higher-ups in the company and were expected by the watchmen. It was rumored that one of the last-mentioned men went on to be a big processor himself in Alaska in later years.

The fish tender NEREID
O.N. 209491
Her Master's Carpenter Certificate
listed her built by Albert Jensen, Friday Harbor,
for himself, 14 Dec. 1911.
The same year he sold her to Friday Harbor Packing Co,
where she is moored in the undated photo.
The mariners are Earl Fowler (L) who
was an engineer on board in 1923 along with his
lifelong friend, George Stillman, both of pioneer
families of Shaw Island, SJC.
John Mathisen, who emigrated from Norway and
trap fished for his first employment in this country,
and Art Hoffman both from Shaw Island,
were captain and engineer of the NEREID in her fish
buying days in the county.
NEREID had lots of other crew over the years.
Bottom photo courtesy of the Fowler family.

       

These were exciting times alright, there were fortunes to be made and fortunes being lost. Everyone had an opportunity to have a job in a great industry. It lasted through the turn of the century, through the “Roaring Twenties” and into the first few years of the “Great Depression.” This was a period of about 45 years. The end came for the fish traps in 1934. By an act of the WA State legislature, the traps were outlawed and could no longer be used. There were several reasons for their actions, but two of them were that the State could not regulate them well enough for conservation. And the purse seiners who had become a big industry themselves complained that the traps were unfair to them because they were taking most of the fish and were a monopoly. Some of the canneries couldn’t survive the loss of the traps, but many others had good fleets of fishing boats and were able to go on."

Above text by John Wade. 4 November 2010.

The Fishermen and the Fisheries of the San Juan Islands with Terry Jackson and Wally Botsford.
The 20 images paired with the text are from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
* More in-depth history of Pacific American Fisheries can be seen on this State Archives site. Scroll down to "History Note."

❖ JENSEN SHIPYARD ❖ Friday Harbor

VENTURE (ON 204609)
&0.5' x 15.3' x 5.4' cannery tender
with 175 HP steam plant
 built 1907 Griffin Bay,
San Juan Island, WA.
She was chartered to
White Crest Canning Co & Coast Fish Co.
She hauled 10 tons of spuds for P.A. Jensen &
transported the family to Seattle to visit 
the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909;
she was a busy gal.
In 1925 VENTURE was bought by
Wagner Towing
and depowered to be purchased by 
 Foss Launch & Tug in 1937
and renamed HILDUR FOSS.
Great notes in Mike Skalley's
Foss, 90 Years of Towboating.
Fate: Intentionally sunk 1 April 1949.
Photo courtesy of Nourdine Jensen.

      

"If it hadn't been that a horde of voracious grasshoppers that ate Ben Jensen, father of Albert Jensen and grandfather of Nourdine Jensen, out of his Iowa homestead in the late 1880s, there might never have been an Albert Jensen & Son Shipyard on San Juan Island.
      A former seaman and carpenter, Ben Jensen migrated from Norway to this country in the middle 1880s.
      "My grandfather came to San Juan County In 1883," said Nordine, owner of Jensen Shipyard, located at the east end of Friday Harbor Bay. "My Dad was about nine yrs old when grandfather came to this island. He had two sisters, Amelia Martin and Nellie Paxson. There were also three brothers, Pat, Joe, and Frank.
      Sometime around 1906 or 1907, Albert and his brothers went into the sawmill business in Friday Harbor. The mill was located in the vicinity of the Union Oil dock; early photographs show sailing vessels lying at anchor in the Bay waiting their turn to take on lumber. In 1919 the Jensens sold the mill and a short time later it burned to the ground.
      During the time the Jensen brothers operated the mill they also built two tugboats, the VENTURE, an 80-ft cannery tender they used to haul commercial freight. Both vessels were built on the beach at Griffin Bay.
      "In those days, if you didn't have a boat of some kind you were island-bound because there were no ferries," Nourdine explained.
      The NELLIE JENSEN served the Jensens for some eight years before she burned beyond repair.
      "I suspect my Dad also built the MARINER about the same time. She was an 80-ft cannery tender that operated around AK."
      Nourdine recalls his father telling about using the MARINER in AK for a season after which the vessel was sold to a Seattle cannery.
      "Dad was on his way to deliver the MARINER to a buyer when the engine quit. It was a stormy day off Iceberg Point [Lopez Island] and the vessel went aground. At the time Dad had his ticket for Australia with him, he was scheduled to go as the rep of Union Engine Co. However, he hadn't yet paid for the engine in the MARINER, but he lost no time getting a pile driver to the sunken boat where he managed to salvage the engine.

      

NEREID (ON 209491)

Fondly remembered in San Juan County.

Built by and for Albert Jensen as Master Carpenter;

72.7' x 16.75' x 6.4' ; 29 tons burden.

Launched Friday Harbor 1911.

Sold that year to Friday Harbor Cannery.

Source: Master Carpenter document filed at NARA, Seattle.

Photo from the archives of 

the Saltwater People Historical Society©

      That same winter Albert built the NEREID and installed the MARINER's engine.
      "These were the days of fish traps and non-powered fishing boats. These boats operated on the west side of San Juan and off Whidbey Is. They were towed out by a tugboat. Today they are called seine skiffs.
      When fishing was over the tug would round up the fish boats and tow them in. This was their only means of getting from one location to another. The tugs, or fish tenders, were first powered by steam and later by diesel."
      Nourdine points out that during the fish trap days (WA outlawed commercial fish traps in 1934, except for the treaty rights for Indians) a great amount of equipment was required to install and remove the traps, logs, and to store various tools required for the job.
      Before starting his Friday Harbor Shipyard, Albert Jensen worked as a steam engineer on various boats around the Sound. These vessels were affectionately referred to as the 'Mosquito Fleet'. After Jensen gave up steamboating, he taught school for a short time in Shaw Island's one-room schoolhouse. 
      Statistically, Nourdine questions the general assumption by laymen that more fish are being caught today than in earlier years.
      "That's pretty hard for me to swallow, particularly when you consider  there were some fifty or sixty canneries operating in the Puget Sound area. In the San Juans there were two canneries on San Juan Island, one at Deer Harbor and West Sound on Orcas. Anacortes had four or five and Bellingham had a half dozen. There were also a number of fish canneries in Port Townsend, Everett, Seattle" [and Shaw Island.]
      In 1910, Albert Jensen established his shipyard at the east end of Friday Harbor off San Juan Channel. Many changes have taken place since the yard opened all those years ago.
      "One of the most noticeable changes in our business has been the gradual change over the past five years from custom boat building to that of maintenance and repairs.
      Custom boat building, which has been our stock in trade since Dad first opened this yard, has been steadily declining each year, while assembly line type of boats is on the increase.
      Financing is another problem today. Banks are more willing to finance a boat that is already built and carries a price tag on it, rather than financing a boat still in the building stages."
      As to whether Nourdine prefers custom boat building to that of maintenance and repairs, he has this to say:
      "Personally, I much prefer to work with handcrafted boats, but as far as making a living goes, we really made no money to speak of on our handcrafted boats. There is actually more money to be made in the maintenance and repair business today."
      Although the Albert Jensen Shipyard still employs the same number of men [at the time of this writing] between 5 and 7, depending upon the season, the requirements for this new type of work differ from those of custom boat building.
      "You've got to roll with the punches, so we've been gradually changing our method of operation to meet this new demand. We've had to. If we depended solely on custom boat building today we'd be out of business. It's that simple."
      In thinking back over some of the boats his firm has turned out, a number of outstanding vessels come to mind.

MOHAWK (ex-ISLANDER)
ON 221640 
91.6' x 21.1' x 7.2' ; 173 G.t. 140 N.t.
Blt by Albert Jensen, Friday Harbor,
September 1921.
Source of data:
Federal MCC document from NARA, Seattle.

       "Perhaps our best known was the 91-ft ISLANDER launched in 1921 and later named the MOHAWK. Prior to WW II, the MOHAWK was sold to Puget Sound Freight Lines. She was later conscripted by the US gov and used to tow supplies to Kiska Island in AK."
      Other memorable vessels built by the yard include the LIBBY, a 54-ft cruiser owned by a Portland man, who moored her in Anacortes. There was also the PUFFIN, a cruiser built for Dr. Clark, and the RUSSWIN built in 1947 or '48 for Doc Russell of Orcas, and then later owned by Gordy Fox. Then there was the HI-SEAS, a 50-ft charter cruiser that was a former USCG vessel and completely rebuilt by the Jensen yard and owned by J.H. Woods of Olga. The most recent handcrafted boat turned out by the Jensen yard was the STRUMPET, a 35-ft troller designed by local architect, Jay Benford, and owned by the author, Ernie Gann. The list goes on.

BÅTEN of Friday Harbor, WA.
Launching, 5 April 1978
A smidgeon under 20 ft.
Designed by Jay Benford,
then of Friday Harbor, 
for Marilyn Anderson & Rachel Adams
of Crane Island, San Juan Archipelago,
 by Jensen Shipyard, Friday Harbor, WA.
Photo possibly by Al Hamilton,
on the scene this day. 
Shared by Nourdine Jensen
to SPHS web admin.

      

There was a moment's lull as Nourdine Jensen stared reflectively from the window of his small shop office. The rain beat a staccato rhythm against the tin roof. A slow grin spread across his face.
           "From where I stand the boat business looks good for a least another 65 years."

Gordon Keith. Voices from the Islands, True Stories about those Who Live in One of America's Most Beautiful Areas, Washington State's San Juan Islands. Thomas Binford Publisher. 1982.
Keith was a resident of Orcas Island, WA., who had many short stories and photographs published by the Islands' Sounder.
   

❖ The Old Cannery Dock, Friday Harbor, WA.

Photo postcard by Johnston, postmarked 1948.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S. ©

Fish Tender NEREID, 
Bow to shore, crew member on deck.

Built 1911 by Albert Jensen, Friday Harbor, WA.

3 Original photos from Saltwater People Historical Society©

Site: Home port of Friday Harbor, WA.

"If only docks could talk, oh what stories they could tell! For many years my Uncle Art was the engineer on the Friday Harbor Canning Co.'s fish carrier NEREID. Of course, when they came in with a load of salmon they needed to tie up at the cannery dock to unload, but other times they just needed a place to park the boat for awhile. In such a case, if all of the spaces were full, they often tied up to another boat that was already at the dock. (This practice is called rafting.)       Way back in the thirties or forties, Uncle Art was a good friend of George Willey who was the manager of the Friday Harbor Canning Co. It seems that one summer, someone with a log patrol license had tied a cedar log alongside the cannery dock. It was a big one, probably in access of six-feet in diameter and about forty-feet long. They left it there for a long time; so long in fact that Mr. Willey was getting worried that a big winter northeaster would drive it right through the cannery dock. He told Uncle Art about his concerns and asked 'Unk' if he could do anything about the situation.       Well, one very foggy day someone untied the big log and gave it a mighty push out into that dense fog. Dad 'just happened' to be out in that fog with his boat, and slowly the huge shape of that log came into sight. Dad said that in that thick fog it looked like it was as big as an aircraft carrier. He towed it home and cut it into shake bolts. Quickly he moved those bolts to a nice secluded clearing in the trees where he split them into shakes. There were enough to shake the entire house with a lot left over. As a teenager, I planed some of those leftover shakes to about an eighth of an inch thickness and made them into a guitar. Some sixty years later I still have that guitar. The cedar wood was beautiful in the guitar; the shakes were beautiful on the house too. They're still on the old house today."       Above text by Henry Hoffman, San Juan County, Oct. 2006        Henry's Stories, Kitchen Garden Press, Shaw Island, 2008.

"Capt." Willey, as he was affectionately known to his many friends, was born in 1869, and came to Puget Sound as a boy where he has been actively engaged in the lumber, shipping, and salmon business almost continuously. 
      Soon after the turn of the century, together with the late Wm. Schultz and Wm. Persell, he formed the Friday Harbor Packing Co. and purchased the present Friday Harbor Canning Co. property, to operate one of the most successful ventures on Puget Sound.
      In 1925, on the death of Wm. Schultz, he took over the cannery and continued as principal owner and manager until 1935, when he retired.
      Courtesy of the Friday Harbor Journal, n.d.