Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1885-05-01
Chat with a BOOthbay Cap'n.
A NEw York REPORTER Co.'s ABOARD A
MAINE MAcKEREL CATCHER AND LEARNS
SOMETHING ABOUT FISHERMEN.

Schooners of the Maine mackerel fleet ar.
rived in New York on Friday and Saturday
last in great numbers, and almost filed the
docks near Fulton market A reporter who
wanted to learn something about fishermen
went on board one of the best looking schoon-
ere In the fleet, and down into the cabin. A
dozen big men, mostly with brown boards,
blue eyes and big chests, sat around a COM
Portable stove. looking warm and contented.
One yelled, Wake up, Cap" aud man with
browner beard, bluer eyes and much big
ger chest than the others, struggled out of a
little berth, rubbing the sleep from his eyes
with one hand and extending the other to
shake nth any one who had come to see him.
That was Henry McKown of Boothbay
skipper Of the schooner Henry Morganthau,
and his grasp was very much like that of a
door crack. He nodded at his own men,
called by their first men, men who had dropped
In from ether schooners to chat, and then
said that all that could be learned about good
boats, could be learned right aboard the
Henry Morganthau. She was fair specimen
of fishing schooners, except that she was
handsomer, faster, and in all WAYS better
than any other
The Henry Morganthsu was as clean as any
yacht, and cleaner than some. Every bit of
woodwork was scrubbed like the floor of a
Dutch kitchen; the cabin where the captain
and five men sleep was fixed up with fanci-
fully stained woods. which in turn were COW
cred with highly colored pictures of young
and charming maidens, all with eyes very
wide open and features very prominent and
amiable. Of the eighteen men who form the
schooner's crew, twelve sleep forward in the
fo'c's'le. and that apartment, which was as
scrupulously neat as the cabin, was rendered
even more cheerful and home like by the
presence Of big cooking stove. cook, and
many fresh baked custsrd pies, which were
scattered around on potato barrels and berths
to cool of.
All the men sat down there together. and
the cook "a fisherman six feet tall) was hard
at work modelling biscuits out OF big sheet
of white dough with the help of cover from
tin spice box, Barrels of fresh water divi-
ded the available space with barrels of things
to eat, and the presence of 1000 fresh
mackerel packed in ice only a few feet away
was revealed by the faintest of fishy odors
just enough to give things touch of reality
But this odor furnishes the fishermen with
% much fish ~ they want, aud they rarely
think oftaking msckerel or any other fish ex-
cept through the nose. All agreed that Just
n present even the name of msckerel was
enough,to disgust them. The catch had been
enormous, and such an unusual number of
boats coming in at once had sent the price of
mackerel down to $3.50 thousand, barely
enough 10 pay for coming into port. About
the highest price ever paid was 10 cents
apiece or slO0 q thousand, and each crew
had come fiyiny home with ever stitch of
sail lugsed on, fondlv hoping to be first and
find the price up. All had got in together,
and thus they had spoiled everything. Even
the shad fishermen were bemoaning their lot,
for they said that with mackerel so cheap
every one would be buying it, and shad
would drop down fifty per cent The