Sea change

Through the prism of Gloucester's past, Mark Kurlansky surveys new pressures on the city's fishing heritage

By Linda Greenlaw | June 8, 2008

The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of
the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester,
America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town
By Mark Kurlansky
Ballantine, 269 pp., illustrated, $35

In "The Last Fish Tale," Mark Kurlansky strikes a poignant chord from the get-go. "Symbolic acts endure and traditions live on when the metaphor is exactly right. That is the principal explanation for why, on the last weekend of every June, dozens of Gloucester men take a boat out to an offshore platform and walk a forty-foot pole covered with a thick, gloppy cushion of grease, try to grab the flag at the end; and whether they succeed or fail, fall a dangerous two or three stories, depending on the tide, to the frigid June sea below. Because the fall into the sea is inevitable and the chances of injury fair, pole walking is very Gloucester."

Pole walking is indeed the right, and most fitting, metaphor for commercial fishing and for Gloucester, one of the last remaining bastions in America of the culture that grew up with and was sustained by the commercial harvesting of the sea. In describing Gloucester and this culture, Kurlansky does with words what Emile Gruppé, Winslow Homer, and Edward Hopper accomplished with paintbrushes when they set out to portray this unique place and its people.

In this meticulously researched history of Gloucester, which encompasses everything from fishing to granite quarrying to boat building to creating art to the manufacturing of anti-fouling paint and oilskins, Kurlansky's love of his subject proves to be as rich as the recipe and story of "starry gazzy pie," a real treat made from a mélange of the riches of the sea.

While Kurlansky embraces all things fishing, he refuses to veer away from difficult subjects, such as the issues surrounding the hot-button topic of overfishing; he manages to present and weigh all the major factors that have contributed to the depletion of certain species fished by participants in the New England industry. Kurlansky notes that climate change, pollution, poor government management, and even the simple cyclical patterns that have caused stocks to rise and fall throughout history all share some of the burden of responsibility for the current downward spiral. This decline took hold after the most recent boom years of the mid-1980s, when financial institutions were eager to loan money for the construction of bigger, more powerful vessels that could tow larger nets over greater distances.

While many coastal cities have sounded the death knell for their fishing fleets, mortally wounded by poor economics and the growing weight of tourism, Gloucester is still trying to resuscitate what's left of its proud heritage and seems confident that commercial fishing can be revived. Most of us like to root for the underdog; Kurlansky is no exception.

In "The Last Fish Tale," men of the sea are revered, not scorned. Kurlansky accurately portrays the people of Gloucester as hard-working, dedicated survivors whose love of God is rivaled only by their love of family. He suggests that these values have been born of disaster. "Gloucester had long been a community of widows and orphans. Occasionally a missing schooner would miraculously appear rounding Eastern Point. On shore, eyes were fixed on the horizon. Sometimes a vessel would be sighted coming home only to sink while wives and children were watching." Kurlansky's record of the first "Gloucester story" (in his words, "a story of miserable irony in which things are shown in their worst light, a story with a sad ending"), which took place in 1635, when the Watch and Wait went ashore in a gale resulting in the loss of 21 people, is the beginning of a history studded by epic disasters right up through 1991, when the Halloween Gale became the Perfect Storm.

Coupled with the danger inherent in a livelihood made or broken by Mother Nature is the unpredictability of the paycheck. "Fishing has always been a precarious business. One year appears a grand success, the next is a complete failure, and Gloucester's history has been one of periodic crisis." But if its history has been constant trials, it has withstood them with a strength that comes in no small part from the glorious mix of people included in Kurlansky's work, for Gloucester is a melting pot of Sicilians, Portuguese, and Jews, among other nationalities and religions, and the residents of this town share a vision of themselves as islanders. The only fault I find with Kurlansky is the title he chose for his book: "The Last Fish Tale." I will side with Vincent Ferrini, Gloucester's first poet laureate, and say that the death of the fishing industry is "unthinkable."

Kurlansky applauds Gloucester's courage and determination in protecting its working waterfront from the developers' rampant occupation of the entire Eastern Seaboard. The most valiant warning this book provides is, to my mind, about the threat of losing what Kurlansky calls "sociodiversity." "Each culture, each way of life that vanishes diminishes the richness of civilization and makes it more difficult for civilization to prosper." "The Last Fish Tale" is a heartfelt tribute - not to those who have perished while engaged in commercial fishing, but rather to those who have chosen to see fishing through the worst of all times.

This book is as beautifully written as the fondest and best-crafted eulogy, but it's a tribute to the living and not the dead. Yes, Kurlansky poses the question of whether the Atlantic Ocean and its unique culture are or aren't terminally ill. But in the end, the readers of this fine work must decide for themselves, and perhaps even take some responsibility for the outcome. And Gloucester? An island city whose name is used as an adjective will always survive mainly because that city is, well, "very Gloucester."

Linda Greenlaw has written three books on commercial fishing and a mystery, "Slipknot." Her second mystery, "Fisherman's Bend," will be released in July.