Bill and Joanne Amaru in the late 1970s.
By Bill Amaru
It was spring, 1974. Joanne and I had made the decision to try commercial fishing for our livelihood. This meant I had to lay down my clarinet and swap my tuxedo and bow tie for oil gear and fishing boots. It was unquestionably the biggest decision I had made since getting married. That had turned out well (and continues to after fifty- plus years) so we secured a loan and became the new owners of a used, wooden Maine-built 30-foot fishing boat.
It was a cute little traditional “down-easter”. Not too wide, but the cedar-over-oak ex-Chatham Fisherman had nice lines, was white with mast-buff trim. It was powered by a gas truck engine of 150 horsepower, hooked up to a Borg-Warner reduction gear. She could do about 12 knots and seemed to me the best of choices for a cod “longliner” — I was over the moon. The dream was a dream no longer.
I was to take her out of Chatham Harbor with a one-man crew and make day trips out to the fishing ground called “the mussels” a two-hour steam from the bar. In those days, if done correctly, and that was a big “IF”, one to two thousand pounds of cod could be caught and landed. In the spring a halibut or two could really make the trips a success as they were about ten times the price of cod. In those days, 18 to 23 cents a pound for cod was about average. We dreaded days when we got fifteen or even twelve cents a pound but it happened. Hard to believe at today’s prices but the revolution in fish consumption had not yet occurred. Fish were plentiful but cheap. Despite the fluctuations in price between bad and terrible, the fleet would sail and land, day after day, week after week during good weather and bad. “Never to be wrought out of that trade and fit for no other” was how Thoreau put it. He was half right anyway.
So the day came for our first trip and out we went. Things went pretty well. The fog was light and the fish we blundered into were big ones, “steak cod” that would be worth a nickel more than smaller “market cod”. Boats from Chatham were all around us, setting their half-mile long strings of hundreds of hooks each. There was Eddie Johnson to the east, Johnny Christianson to the west, and Bob Hyora setting south of us. We shoe-horned our gear among them, somehow not setting over anybody. Things almost seemed to be going too well when our joy at not screwing up took a hit. The engine was running smoothly but suddenly, after a short time into our return trip home, the transmission started clunking and clanking below the floorboards. We pulled the hatch cover off and there, in the bilge, was the red transmission fluid that had overheated and leaked out. Our first breakdown had occurred. The CB radio was used and a tow home was secured from my good friend Roger Horne who was nearby hand-lining cod.
Next day we were busy removing the transmission from the boat and getting it to Fairhaven for repairs. I told Bill Daniels, the agent from Athern Marine, whom I had bought the boat from what had happened. Because I had just bought the boat through him, he agreed to pay for the repair. There was no guarantee when I bought the boat but because Athern Agency is a reputable boat brokerage, they agreed to help out. That was the way it was: people in town, from the St. Pierres and Slutters for engine repairs to the gear store for hooks, line and bait, worked together to keep their customers and friends going. For the most part, it remains that way today.
We were back in business by the end of the week and back out fishing. We made a couple of trips and things seemed to be okay but on the third trip the same thing happened again. I was beginning to wonder if I was jinxed and had bought a salt water “lemon”. My moniker, “lucky”, was wearing thin.
This time when we arrived at the repair shop in Fairhaven, the owner of the shop was looking at me strangely. “Hay lucky”, he said “something’s not right here. These transmissions last thousands of hours, not several days … something is going on here and we are going to find out what”. We talked about just what I was doing when under way. Nothing seemed unusual. The transmission was sitting on his work station in front of us. “You see this lever here?” Yes, it was the lever that slid back and forth to put the gear from neutral to forward or reverse. “Which way is it pointing when you go forward?” “This way— back”, I said. “Well now—you are in reverse when you are going forward. This transmission is not designed to do that; you will destroy the gears and plates using reverse to go forward, just as you did. You need to change the propeller from right hand to left or get a different transmission”. Neither option was possible because I was broke. It would take thousands of dollars to do either and I barely had enough to put gas in my tank to get home.
I was beginning to think we had made a giant error in choosing to be a commercial fisherman. My wife had given birth to our son Jason just weeks before. She had been the main breadwinner and now she was home with our baby boy and I was broken down, the Joanne-A tied to the dock at the fish pier.
Word got around — I had been running the transmission in reverse while going forward. Pretty lame for anyone with even a little mechanical knowledge. I had very little. As fate would have it, a fisherman named Jay Lanzillo heard what I was up against. He came down to the boat, and proceeded to tell me he had a transmission sitting on his porch that would work to reverse the direction of the prop so when I put the gear in forward, the boat would actually go forward. Problem solved! He didn’t actually own the transmission but said the fellow who did would not mind if I “borrowed” it. It remained in Joanne-A until I sold her years later—worked perfectly. The friend was Otto Zabitone, he never asked me for a penny and anyone who knew him knew why. He was a prince of a guy, incredibly talented, and had a rock band that played all over town. He is greatly missed by us older fishermen who knew him.
So we made it over the first of several hurdles leading to my eventual success as a commercial fisherman, a career I have been very thankful for sticking to. My son and grandson are carrying on the tradition handed me by my father. There is an expression written into the Chatham Fisherman’s Memorial that says:
Ever Changing to Remain the Same.
Some things are worth hanging onto. Fishing, especially from Chatham, is one.
Bill Amaru