Back in the mid-1980's I worked for a couple of seasons aboard a Chesapeake Bay skipjack, dredging for oysters in the last fleet of working wooden sailing vessels in the U.S. At one point I asked the skipper if I could spend a day aboard as photographer rather than crew, and he graciously agreed. A fill-in took my spot on deck while I wandered around with my Pentax. The resulting pictures were developed and put in a box, and I promptly forgot them for 28 years. I stumbled upon them recently and decided to scan and upload them as a photographic record of a way of life that is pretty much gone. Those of you with an interest in history or traditional wooden boats may enjoy the photos.
Thanks for posting this. Commercial fishing is really tough work and I
never knew it was still being done by sail power up into the 1980's.
Do you ever wonder what kind of work you'd be doing today if there were no
computers?
Hmm, well I don't wonder about that exactly, because it's hard to imagine a world without computers at this point. But I did think about staying on the water for a time. Economically, though, it's difficult.
Here in Falmouth UK, fishermen & oyster farmers in the bay still use sailing boats: