Rivermen ham it up for the camera while tonging shells from a har washed up hy a shell kicker. A hove right , mounds of oyster shells on Nell 's Island await transport to the grounds. These photos are from the 1930s and '40s, courtesy Frederic Goodsell, Milford CT.
and the demand for shell ceased, Frederic Goodsell worked as a longshoreman in Bridgeport until retirement. Today the natural oyster beds on the Housatoni c are productive and Frederic keeps a scow with oyster dredges moored on the river. The laws that permitted harvesting by tonging have been abrogated by new rules allowing watermen to drag dredges to catch oysters. However, Frederic keeps a couple pair of tongs with eighteen-foot stales. From time to time he motors out to certain spots he knows and tongs a couple of bushe ls. And he says,"! never felt better in my life-tongi ng and working the .t river. ... "
By mid-summer, shells were moved from the mounds to a scow or (below) a schooner. In a few weeks th e rivermen would sell and load eight month's worth of kicked and tonged Housatonic shell.
Capta in Teuscher, a steady contributo r to Sea History magazine, has completed and published The Last Drift Oral Hi story Project (SH 49 ), and continues his study of th e work and culture ofthe Long Island Sound oysterman. Loaded beyond the gunwales , with her booms raised to clear the deckload, the Sarah Maria is pushed downstream to the Sound around 1910. where she will hoisl sail and delil'er her cargo to an oyster company's grounds.
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