New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-10-29
KING OF CRUSTACEANS.
HOLSTERS No7o Being Taken by
Greeks an Rhode Island Waters.

The wary pugnacious American lobster, the
king of crustaceans, has now an enemy more
relentless than any he has known before Ii
Is a case of Greek meeting Greek. The lobster
is like the Grecian in being ready to defend his
liberty at all costs, even to the point of losing
a portion of his person, and he takes the heid
at the sign of the least Infringement Of what
he believes to be his rights. His new enemy is
the Greek fisherman. Like the Portuguese VINO
go to New Bedford because it is the centre OF
the industry toward which they have leaning
so the sealoving and seafaring Greek mas taken
up the occupation of lobster catching which
calls for strength fearessness and high de-
gree of skill in boat sailing. He does 1t more
theoretically than his competitor, the average
Maine lobsterman.
Hauling up the lobster traps with their burden
of trailing seaweed and Holsters from depth
of from 25 to 100 feet single handed, while man
aging A catboat in a lively breeze and dancing
water is no easy task. The members of the
Greek clustering colony at Newport, r. l. how
ever ATTEMPT to handle d hundred of these in
the course of a day, while their American com
petitors are generally satisfied with their days
labor if they have taken up nifty or Sixty
These Greeks possess great powers OF endur-
apce and are willing to go for long intervals
without proper food and sleep in the pursuit
Of their occupation. The picturesque Greek, by
his assiduity, has gained virtual monopoly or
the lobster business off the Rhode Island coast.
The colony numbers between seventy-fve and
one hundred men. Their fleet consists of fifty
large sailboatS, dozen of which are equipped
with auxiliary power and number of skiffs.
The centre of their industry is the typical New
England 'Iong wharf" which has a half-mile
of water frontage. The wharf is their home,
their land workshop and their play centre In
the evenings the tables of their cafes are filled
with Greeks, swarthy and weather beaten.
The lobster is no stranger to the Greek, for
this peculiar creature figured in Greek literature
as long ago as 400 B. c. Athenaus, that Greek
compiler of other mems sayings who had such
fancy for cookery and scandal as subjects,
quotes Sophron, who lived a couple of hundred
years before the tresome compiler. as saying:
See these holsters! See how red they are,
How smooth and glossy are their hair and coats
These must have been "broiled alive" Pny
also knew about them. The old Norsemen evil
IDENTIFY were well acquainted with the queer
creature fer it is referred to in the "Eddas and
Sagas" In Olaf Tryggvason's Saga" it is said
that 1.-The wave horses run over the lobster
fields which is the Norsemans way of saying
that his ships ploughed the waves Notwith-
standing the length of time which the lob
ster has been recognized. until ten years ago
little was known about its curious habits When
the lobster industry began to it's fe
history was studied with the idea of finding if
there was not way in which it could be arti-
hcially propagated and the numbers increased.
The results of these Investigations and the ex-
periments at Woods Hole and Wexford, r. L.,
have proved that there is possibility of in
creasing the number, but how successful the
effort will be cannot be estimated for little
time as Holsters grow slowly. A lobster doss
not reach maturity much before it is five years
Did.
The boxer of the world of water is the lobster.
Its two great claws have the ponderous, stuffed
appearance of the boxing glove. and the lobster
tarries them up before it with the defiant atti-
tude that marks the pugilist. 1t is always