Ten thousand dollars’ worth of prime Maine lobster belonging to Atwood Lobster, of Spruce Head Island, crashed into one of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. That event, reported at the time, suggested how far William Atwood had come from his first buying station at Spruce Head in 1962, a tiny wharf he called Bill’s that he rented for $35 a month. He paid lobstermen forty cents a pound for the lobster they brought him, and made four cents on each pound he sold.
Atwood grew up in the family business. But the business started in Boston. His grandfather, William David Atwood, emigrated from Clark’s Harbor, Nova Scotia, in 1914. His father, uncle and grandfather went into business in 1925 on Commercial Wharf under the name Atwood Brothers. Then in 1948, they moved to Foster’s Wharf, where in May of 1950, the wharf burned.
“I don’t think they came out of it very well,” Atwood said. “They had a family meeting, and decided to move to Maine. My father commuted to Braintree off and on for the next two years.” The two uncles and two aunts moved to Tenants Harbor where they re-located Atwood Brothers Lobster Company, which operated from 1950 to 1991.
The summer he was 14, Atwood said, “I started my training by riding lobster trucks to Maine to pick up lobster. I’d stay with my relatives and come back a few days later.” He got his driver’s license at 15 and spent his second summer in the business driving around the coast buying lobster, learning the trade. After high school, he joined the Marine Corps and served during a period of peace. Upon his discharge, he returned to Boston, spent the next two years at business school, and then went back to the family business. When his father wanted a buying station at Spruce Head, Atwood said he’d run it, but only on commission, not salary, hence the four cents per pound. He started with six lobstermen (only a couple of good ones, he recalls) bringing him their landings.
Four or five years later, he made a decision to leave the family business. He’d been offered a commission of seven cents per pound by another dealer and said, “I went to my relatives, and they wouldn’t pay the seven cents. I had to inform my father that I couldn’t sell to him. My father said, `Well, I don’t blame you.’ ”
The young Atwood went through a hard time that led to another opportunity. Because his cove froze during the winter of 1965, he didn’t have a lot to do, so he helped a friend with the shrimp bonanza of the time. They set up a dealership in Port Clyde with a third partner. To do this, he signed over his life insurance policy. He had married earlier that year and had his first child on the way.
“We were cooking shrimp,” he said, “putting them in ten-kilo boxes, and sending them to Sweden.” The next year, he said, “My cousin and I set up a shrimp business, called it Rockland Shrimp Co. and operated it for two years.” He said shrimp peeling machines made it possible for him and his cousin to process a million pounds of shrimp.
“We marketed the shrimp to two big companies,” he said. “It was important because I met someone who did lobster and shrimp, and that’s when I started shipping lobster.”
Atwood started shipping his lobster to New York’s Fulton Fish Market. He’d buy a thousand pounds of lobster, pack them in ice in chicken crates and took them to be trucked to New York. “Every day, five days a week, I’d buy during the day and the next day I’d call and tell them the price, and they’d buy.”
The success of his Fulton Fish Market sales gave him the opportunity in 1970 to buy his present Spruce Head Island property with a partner whom he bought out ten years later.
The original property included one “dinky” wharf that was only eight feet wide, a hundred by hundred-foot warehouse, and a “dinky” building in front of the original island store. He has since added four or five other pieces to the original property and now has five major buildings, two good wharves, ten trucks and two tractors. He has 38 employees.
In addition to his lobster business, Atwood started buying and selling fish in 1982, but said, “It didn’t work because it teed off the lobstermen, having fish all over the wharves.” He went back to shipping lobster and has stayed with it, always improving it and adding to it.
The working part of the operation takes place in two large buildings. In the first building, John Petersdorf, 34, Atwood’s second-in-command, does almost all the buying. He has been in the business for 20 years and his father and grandfather worked for Atwood’s father and uncle. The orders and the lobsters that make up those orders get graded and go through the first sort for quality in that first building, then they go through a chute into the second building where they are re-graded for quality and size, and packed for shipment. A third building across the driveway holds a lunchroom and a conference room; upstairs are sleeping quarters for visiting workers, truckers, etc.
Asked the secret of his success beyond his obvious hard work, Atwood said he thinks his insistence on quality has something to do with it. He started sending his best lobster to James Brody at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in 1972. He still does. It’s a standing order. He continues to build on his reputation.
“We’re probably the best marketing operation for lobster in Maine,” he said. At 68, Atwood’s not bragging. The Maine International Trade Center has twice awarded the Atwood Lobster Company “Maine’s Exporter of the Year.”