Menhaden Men By Michael Cohn Photographs H. David Hartman
The Tideland, a 572-ton "bunker boat" is one of the modern successors to the 19th century whalers. Like the catch of the whalers, menhaden or "bunkers" are used for oil and other industrial purposes instead of for food. Like crewmen of the whalers, the menhaden men are sometimes downrated as sailors because their catch "smells." Finally, like many whaling men of the 19th century, most menhaden men are blacks. Wednesday night the Tideland left Pt. Monmouth, N.J. Aboard were its 17man crew and we two observers. By early dawn we were off Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, looking for large schools of menhaden. These fish, an oily relative of the herring, account for almost half of the total landing of fish in the United States. They usually are found within a few miles of the shore along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in summer. If they are swimming near the surface, they can be spotted by the change of color of the water or by the "splashing" of their fins. Light aircraft Seine boats lea ving the Tideland getting ready to set the net around a school of menhaden.
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help in the spotting of schools. Even before breakfast of ham, grits and eggs had been finished or the spotter plane had gotten off the ground, the dawn light showed a school in range. The strident klaxon summoned the crew to the boats and within three minutes, both boats were in the water. Smoking diesels have replaced the back-breaking oars used in the boats until the 1930s, but the thrill of the chase remains the same. Captain Edwards, a descendant of old-time whalers of Long Island, signalled the boats to circle the school, dragging the heavy seine net behind them. As soon as the circle was complete, the dropping of the 700 lb . "tom" weight closed the bottom of the purse seine. Like whales the menhaden sometimes "sound" or dive through the bottom of the circle before the "tom" can be dropped and then the boats have a "water haul." This time all went well: 50,000 menhaden and a few sharks that feed on them were trapped in the narrowing net. Now the job was to bring this load back to the mother-ship, com-
ing up under the command of the "pilot" or ship handler. The two seine boats and the ship formed a triangle with the net in the middle. A large hose was lowered into the net from the mother-ship and sucked up the squirming fish, depositing them, via a conveyor belt, into the refrigerated hold. Nine times that day the boats went out, netting some 700,000 fish or about one-third of the two million fish capacity of the Tideland. Between hauls the net was repaired where large sharks or sharp edges had made holes through which the menhaden could escape. Menhaden fishing is a relative newcomer among the world's fisheries. Not until the 1840s did the invention of steam cookers and pressers change the menhaden from "trash fish" to a valuable resource for oil and poultry feed. In 1867 the menhaden suddenly disappeared from the Gulf of Maine, probably because of a change in water temperature. They did not show up again off Massachusetts until 100 years later. The menhaden fleets changed their base from the Massachusetts coast to Reedsville, Virginia, on the Chesapeake. Due to this change of base Virginia Blacks, ex-slaves and freedmen, replaced the Yankee fishermen on the menhaden steamers . .Boat handling and physical strength were needed to handle the oars and the nets and the blacks had both the physical stamina and the experience. Many of them had been oystermen and fishermen on the bay for generations, while some blacks had served as crewmen or pilots on coastal steamers. Since, like in whaling, the prestige and pay of menhaden fishing was low, the blacks had little competition in their new trade. Soon son followed father, nephew joined uncle, until the dialect of the Virginia shore was the lingua franca of the menhaden boats. Gradually blacks also replaced whites as engineers, oilers and mates until only the captain and the pilot were not members of the Afro-American communities of Mathews County, Virginia. When diesels replaced both the steam engines of the