When Arthur “Sparky” Pierce was growing up in Sebasco Estates, Phippsburg, six uncles and aunts and their families lived nearby. Now, two remain. The rest and their children have scattered. During Pierce’s youth, groundfish, mackerel and shrimp were plentiful, a lobsterman could make a decent living for his family without having to unsnarl his lines from another lobsterman’s string crowded close by, and a kid could earn money collecting sea moss and selling it locally.
Fishermen navigated by compass, watch and marks, and when they steamed home in the evening, they would be welcomed by familiar lights from their friends’ homes clustered along the shore. Now, Pierce writes of these homes: But some went to folks from far away/priced too high for natives to pay./ The home destroyed and now stands alone/a dark cold house with no one home.
Pierce, who has fished for lobster, groundfish and shrimp, decided two years ago to write down stories and poems about his life as a fisherman. “I wanted to do it for my grandchildren,” he says. “So much gets lost. I wish I’d known more about my grandparents.” Also, he says, he wanted the people he writes about to be remembered, and to preserve a way of life that is being threatened.
His collection of 10 stories and 12 poems covers topics which range from gripping accounts of the dangers and unpredictable weather every fisherman faces to tales of one thing that hasn’t changed – the merciless teasing and pranks fishermen play on each other, and sometimes, the revenge exacted. There are poems that describe and celebrate the beauty, power and changeableness of the weather, and there’s a riveting tale of a rescue at sea.
Pierce’s maternal grandfather was a fisherman and lay preacher who spanned the transition from trawl fishing off sailing vessels to working from draggers. He also fished for lobsters. Although Pierce was not old enough to fish with him before he died, he says in one story that “Having a heritage like this I was bound to get a good dose of fishing and religion.” Both have remained the cornerstones of his life – a strong faith and the lure of the sea. “From my earliest life the sea called,” he writes. “I was smitten. To earn a living on the sea became a driving goal of my life.”
He spent many hours of his youth with an uncle, Henry Alexander, who lived next door and was also a fisherman. “He took me out on his dragger when I was so little I was more hindrance than help,” Pierce says, but when he was older, Alexander taught him how to collect sea moss, and later, helped him get started lobstering. Pierce worked for several years in a local fish factory, and when that closed down, he decided to buy a skiff and 30 traps and be a part-time lobsterman. Alexander taught him how to build traps, tie knots, handle his boat, navigate, how to find the best places to set his traps, and many other skills he needed to go out on his own. The rest, he says, he learned by trial and error.
Pierce earned enough to buy more traps, then a 22-foot wooden boat, the SEA DUCK, from his uncle, and later, the 36-foot wooden lobster boat, RUFFRIDER, which he owned for 15 years, and finally, his present boat, the 37-foot ST. ELMO’S FIRE, which he has owned for 14 years. When he was 27 years old and needed to make more money to support his family, he left fishing full time to work at BIW and fished for lobsters part-time. But after 10 months, he became desperate get back to fishing full time, and so jumped at an opportunity to captain a run-down dragger, the “JACKIE B,” a hasty decision that provides material for one of his most dramatic stories.
Pierce’s mother, Louise, who had gone out on her father’s dragger when she was growing up, sometimes accompanied Pierce when he collected sea moss. She continued to fish with him on and off until she was 70, often as his sternman on the lobster boat and also on tuna fishing trips. She says she sorely misses all this now that her health prevents her from going on the boat. One of his stories, “The Rogue Wave,” describes a terrifying experience they had when she was on board. She remained calm throughout, and simply commented afterwards, “That’s the biggest one I’ve seen ever since I’ve been going, but I knew you could handle it.”
Two of his stories pay tribute to the strong bond among fishermen and their willingness to help each other even while endangering their own lives. In a description of retrieving the RUTH FRANCES, a 65-foot dragger that had broken her mooring, Pierce puts the reader on the scene as he describes battling a northwest gale in his flat-bottomed skiff to reach his lobster boat, and then the wild time he and neighbor Mickey Varian had trying to attach a towrope to the dragger, which was “aground and beating up against the shore with every roll.”
A longer story, “God’s Hand at Sea,” builds suspense as Pierce describes the run-down JACKIE B and the way she starts to fall apart when he is fishing 20 miles offshore in December, and the weather has turned bad. As the seas build, the boat begins to vibrate and suddenly he realizes all too clearly that “The only things between us and certain death was a rotten old hull, rusty nails, pumps, a stubborn old diesel, a couple of friends and the belief that God would bring me home in spite of myself.”
The ETHEL B, captained by Clint Richardson, Jr., comes to help, and Pierce vividly describes their unsuccessful attempts to set up a tow line and the subsequent successful hook-up with the RUTH FRANCES, captained by Kendall Wallace.
On a less dramatic note, Pierce immortalizes the time he accidentally dumped a barrel of putrid bait off the wharf and onto 70-year-old Everett Lowell. When Pierce, horrified, called down to say how sorry he was and asked if he could do anything, Lowell replied, “Nope, you’ve done enough.”
A soft-spoken man, Pierce is nevertheless a persuasive speaker, and has been active in many town issues, particularly those that affect fishermen. He is on the Winnegance Alewife Commission and chairs the Town Landing Committee. The latter grew out of the “Acre Lot Committee,” a group that worked for 12 years to surmount opposition to building a small town wharf now used by many Phippsburg fishermen who live inland. He also has been outspoken on state and federal issues, from lobster vent specifications to regulations to protect whales and has served on the Zone F Council.
Pierce is sorry none of his three sons is able to make a living fishing full time (One fishes for lobsters part-time.) “I’m sorry because I would love to have their company,” he says, “but when I see all that is happening [with regulations], I think in the future nobody will be able to make a living lobstering full time. I’m just as glad they chose another life.”
Now 53, Pierce says lobstering becomes harder every year. Even his teenaged granddaughter, Amanda, one of six grandchildren ranging from 8 months to 18 years, realizes how hard it is. “She told me,” he says, ‘I feel bad for you, Grampy, because the work you do is real tough.'” Still, he plans to fish as long as he can work.
Like many fishermen, Pierce is a gifted storyteller. His taking time to capture and preserve these stories has created a priceless gift for his grandchildren, friends and the town of Phippsburg. He hopes to publish the stories and poems in book form.
Pierce will read from his collection at the Annual Meeting of the Phippsburg Historical Society at the Main Deck, Sebasco Lodge, at 7 p.m. on Aug. 19.