Archives and Collections

Great is my frustration with public archives that keep changing their URLs, requiring us amateur historians to keep updating our links as they revamp their collections. Presently, the Canneries, Landmarks and Ports are still valid, but the Tenders are not. If I figure out how to redo their links (once again), I will, but this time I'm not holding my breath.

Eclipse

One of the interesting characters I met as a salmon tenderman in the San Juan Islands (WA State) in the 1970s was Peter Schugren, a wooden boat builder who owned a vessel called Eclipse. Peter worked in Ballard (Seattle) when we first met, and later moved to Lopez Island, where I helped him unload timbers for a boat he was building in his barn. Later, my friend Rob Krebs, who engineered for me on a tender out of the La Conner NEFCO cannery, skippered the Eclipse for Peter one fall.

Cannery Vessels

For those unfamiliar with the nautical term, tenders are boats used for transporting fish from fishing grounds to canneries. Enjoy browsing some of these fine cannery vessels my fellow seafaring friends and I operated from Cook Inlet to the Columbia River.

Time for a Mug Up

With the salmon mustering off the mouth of Redwood Creek, waiting for this week's rain to swell the stream for them to swim to their spawning redds in Muir Woods National Monument, this seemed like a good time for a mug up to reminisce about the many runs we watched from the Golden Gate to Kodiak. If you're holed up for the season somewhere, this might be a good time to browse the photos of far-flung places and times, before we, too, get lost in the mist.

Nail in the Coffin

Here's the story of how the company went under.

Company Records

Historians might find the University of Washington Library useful in documenting what was once the largest salmon producing company in the world.

Halibut Heaven

Here's an article about NEFCO in the Alaska and British Columbia halibut industry, with some old plant and vessel photos.

Ketchikan Cannery

I just came across this article about NEFCO in Ketchikan. It has some good pictures, too.

A Tenderman's View

In the sidebar, I included tenders from Columbia River, Puget Sound, as well as Alaska. A lot of the fleets when I was tendering were previously PAF vessels, and the AFU had branches in Astoria and even San Francisco. I guess I'm presenting a tenderman's view, rather than creating a company history. NEFCO is my point of departure, but it would be fun to hear from others. Like myself, I imagine some worked for more than one outfit over the years.

Into the Mist

New England Fish Company was one of the largest salmon cannery operations around, when I was growing up. I later worked as a mate and captain on their tenders out of La Conner WA, Cordova AK, and Ketchikan AK. Then in 1980 they went belly up and I haven't been able to find hide nor hair of their existence online, except for one photo of the Orca cannery just outside Cordova.

I'm hoping by starting this weblog--named after one of their former vessels I skippered for Independent Fishermen's Packing Co. of Anacortes WA--that I'll manage to come across others who might know of photographic or bibliographic repositories I might contact. Maybe we can even share some stories about this outfit that just vanished into the mist.

Meanwhile, I'll post some of my favorite vessel photos in the sidebar for old-timers to enjoy.