Christopher Seufert photo
By John Pappalardo
Every port has a personality. This weekend, Provincetown’s is on display.
The Blessing of the Fleet on June 30, within a three-day Portuguese Festival, will be the 77th incarnation. In 1947, a couple of Provincetown fishermen went up to Gloucester for that port’s annual Blessing and came home wanting to celebrate their own; as each port has a personality, they can be inspired by each other and be competitive too.
For all the ways Provincetown is unique, its fishing fleet ranks right up there. The town was the wealthiest per capita in Massachusetts during the latter 1800s because fishing was so strong. That included landing everything from mackerel to whales, with 70 or so commercial wharves jutting into the harbor like porcupine quills. The beautiful town hall was built with fishing money, as were most of the handsome old buildings East End to West.
In the earliest days it was Yankee captains and crew, some migrating down from the Canadian Maritimes, who powered the industry. But more than a century ago arrivals from mainland Portugal became the heart of the fleet. Even before that, whaling ships might stop in the Azores, sometimes taking on crew (perhaps after desertions) and bringing them back to town, so Portuguese has been spoken on those streets for a long time.
When internal combustion engines arrived a century ago, they provided piston and hydraulic muscle that allowed small dayboats to play out big nets, Eastern rig, Western rig, then stern trawling. Boats that had relied on what they called “Portagee power,” half a dozen or more men muscling hauls onto decks, could get a lot more pounds with a lot less effort. Provincetown’s draggers focused on fish like whiting, “ling.” Railroad tracks laid down MacMillan Wharf made it possible to roll fish to market in New York or Boston within a day, then trucks took over. Cold storage facilities by the wharves froze millions of pounds, ensuring steadier supply to meet demand, until refrigerated technology rendered them obsolete.
There are plenty of people still around, some celebrating this weekend, who remember when Provincetown had 50 or more family-run draggers tied up at MacMillan most every evening, resting for another day, fishing more than 200 days a year. Many of the other wharves had been wiped out during the Portland Gale and other storms, but MacMillan stayed strong in part because it was built to handle a railroad. The town understood how important fishing was to the economy and culture, committing to commercial slips only on the east side.
The distance between Provincetown and Chatham is in some ways greater than the miles a crow flies. Chatham was a hook-and-line port focused on codfish (that shifted toward gillnetting), while Provincetown was a dragger port (for as long as small-boat trawling worked). Chatham believed hooked cod was superior; Provincetown believed their dayboat fleet fed more people, especially immigrant communities. Cultural, religious, and linguistic barriers also separated the fleets.
But both ports were powerhouses, always in the top tier of landings in Massachusetts, rivaling Gloucester and New Bedford. And both still bring it home, though Provincetown’s focus in recent years has shifted toward lobstering more than groundfish, while Chatham has moved away from cod toward skates and dogs.
I am happy to say I see the perceived separation between the ports diminishing; what Cape fishermen have in common — goals, mission, lifestyle, challenges, and threats — is so much more important than their differences.
To back up my optimism, here’s some proof positive:
This year’s Blessing of the Fleet’s annual booklet, a wonderful read full of great stories, history, and personalities, features a painting on the cover of Captain Beau Gribbin’s F/V Glutton, with a lead story about Beau written by our very own Doreen Leggett. We’re proud to say that Captain Gribbin is a member of our board of directors at the Alliance, never shy about bringing his and Provincetown’s perspectives to the table. When a handsome statue of St. Peter the Apostle is carried down from the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday morning, it will be handed to Beau to reside on his deck and lead a procession of vessels under the gaze of the Bishop of Fall River, the first to have holy water sprinkled down.
So here’s to a great Blessing. And here’s to building connections, common ground and common seas, among our small-boat ports, celebrating men and women who continue to live and work a great tradition.
John Pappalardo is CEO of The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance