The Bay Men: A Clammer’S Story

By Evert Bay Scott

After spending more of his youth tugging on clam rakes than he did in classrooms, and most of his adult years dealing with the not so honest characters of New York Citys toughest fish markets, Evert Bay Scott decided to write of it. He wanted to tell of his life and take his readers out there with him, along the shores of Long Island. Mr. Scott takes you on board telling about the run-ins, characters and con men that he came to know on the darker side of the clamming game; the side he wound up on. So hold on tight, this adventure on the Great South Bay is about to set sail!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453536773

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Epilogue

Dedication

I want to thank my wife, Pam, for her help and support in writing my story. A special thank-you goes to my illustrator, Nancy L. Nuce, for her fine artwork. Nancy made the hard work of drawing illustrations to fit my needs a fun and simple experience. And thank you to my friends that have been mentioned throughout my story, maybe not by their proper names, but I’m sure most know just who they are within the story.

"Someone famous once said, Do something each day that scares you

. . . I am sure I made that someone proud"

- EBS

Pic 6.jpg

Preface

I hope you enjoy reading my book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Writing the story was fun; it did sadden me at times, but it also made me grateful. Once I completed the book, I had a feeling of pride. I was proud that I had been able to meet so many hardworking and honest baymen—men who didn’t let themselves get drawn in over that line. I was also grateful, glad to have lived the life I had out there on the waters off Long Island. But most of all, I found myself saddened by my own abuse of the thing I loved so much, always taking from that bay and never really returning anything back to her. My story takes you back to a not-so-distant time on the bays, rivers, and docks of Long Island when the business I had been born into, the clam business, was running out of control. It tells of a side of the industry not many know of. I have of course changed the names of characters to keep me from harm’s way. I have had to rename the companies I dealt with to keep me from being sued, and the locations in my story—well, they should all be pretty much correct, just don’t use any of them for directions.

Please have fun reading my story. It is, as far as I can recall, a true account of some of the things that took place out there not so long ago on the Great South Bay.

Chapter 1

The Chase

Get your rake up! I hear Cole say quietly in his deep voice. Hear it? Listen.

It is a cold January night: light snow, outgoing tide, and lots of clams, nickels lying all over the bottom—quick money if you had the know-how, strength, and balls to head out in midwinter at one in the morning with the urge to dig them up.

I think to myself, What’s Cole hearing? I hear nothing out of the ordinary.

This is a perfect night for poaching. Conservation officers don’t like snowy nights. The poor visibility is something they are instructed not to deal with. I shake my head, letting him know I hear nothing out of the ordinary. Cole shrugs and says, Maybe the tide.

He continues talking as he starts yanking on his rake once again, about how glad he was that we were back out here working together, doing what the two of us had started doing fifteen years ago.

Hear it? Cole asks again. Once again, I stop pulling on my rake. My attention now focuses on the blackness lying out in front of me. Nearby and just to the side of me, I can hear the light snow as it lands on the top of my boat’s small cabin, but whatever my friend’s hearing is out of range from me. As Cole’s sharpie drifts up against my boat, I can see him staring in the distance.

Just then, I begin hearing something. As Cole puts his rubber boot on the side of my boat in an effort to keep our boats from hitting each other, I nod my head, letting him know I heard something too.

"Cole, pick up your rake. Let’s sit here a minute," I whisper to him quietly. I’m thinking to myself that it may be ice moving with the tide; there was some up on the banks of the cove as we came in here.

Then the faint sound of a motor idling comes into range. I begin to see the smoky exhaust of an outboard making its way along the bulkhead just outside the cove. The silhouettes of a couple of people come into view. As they enter the mouth of the cove, I start thinking, More poachers?

Cole says, They’re Connies.

I’m thinking to myself, No way! Can’t be!

At that moment, a spotlight starts dancing its way around the water, looking for something. The light quickly makes its way straight to us, first my boat, then over to Cole’s sharpie. As I lay my rake on the deck of my garvey, I can hear Cole fire up his engine, and I quickly do the same. These guys are right in the narrow mouth of Duck Cove, the only way in and out. The two of us look at each other through our cabin doors and smile; we know it is back to business as we simultaneously hit our throttles wide open. Cole goes portside; I go starboard. Yeah, we’ve done this before and never at night without a plan.

My gear—my rake, about two and a half bushel bags of clams, along with a few empty bushel baskets—slide back on the snow-covered deck of my boat. They all come to a stop against my cabin as the boat settles down on plane. The pair of us shoot by what I can now see is a couple of New York State conservation officers. A spotlight’s beam hinders my sight for a split second, but I quickly make out the open water in front of me. Following Cole and now right up on him, with my bow almost hitting his transom, I have to throttle back just slightly, making sure to avoid his boat.

As he turns hard to port and heads off to the east, I, as by plan, go starboard and head to the west, making these guys have to choose which boat they want to chase. We both know that by the time the patrol boat makes its turnaround in the narrow cove, we’ll be at least a quarter mile ahead of them and cranking wide open.

We always stuck to our plan. We’d go over it before we left the dock and stuck to it, making sure we were on the same page as far as any chases went. We had to; there had been more and more marine patrols popping up out here the last couple of months than ever before.

The State had started a new division of enforcement a while back. It seemed that many of the local marine enforcement agencies had come to the conclusion that illegal clamming was getting out of control. According to the head of marine enforcement for the State of New York, some of us clammers had been taking advantage of the lack of enforcement on the waters of Long Island over the past few months. The island’s papers had article after article about how the State was planning on cracking down on the illegal clamming trade.

Chapter 2

Back to the Chase!

With my motor wide open again and screaming, doing almost sixty miles per hour and traveling parallel to Long Island, I continue to watch out for landmarks off my bow, westward toward Moriches.

The thought of these Connies now knowing about our reliable little cove pisses me off—that little honey hole, that’s what we would call an area filled with clams and in this case, a restricted one loaded with them. You see, at that point in the clam trade, the State of New York was closing more areas out here than they were leaving open for us to legally work in. And Duck Cove—this nicely hidden, out-of-the-way muddy cove—could have kept us in cash all winter.

But my thoughts at that moment had to be about this patrol boat behind me.

As I look out my cabin door, the cold air and snow hit my face like ice pellets. Looking back, I’m hoping the chase boat went east; but sure enough, they’re back there in my wake. I can see them about a quarter mile behind. I can’t believe these fools have turned their running lights on, making it a lot easier for me to see them through the blurry light snow out here off Long Island.

There was nothing like a good boat chase out on the Great South Bay! We knew that there weren’t a lot of law enforcement boats around, if any, that could keep up with us out here, our boats having been rigged to operate at night. A good night boat had to have the biggest outboard made pushing it, a good dark finish, and absolutely nothing reflective on board. The boat had to be built light and wide, helping it draw as little water as possible, leaving any law enforcement with little chance of running it down.

Well, just as long as you knew just what to look out for out there at night—buoys, pilings, sandbars, docks, and, oh yeah, boats too—they could all come up on you real fast especially at sixty or seventy miles per hour in the dark. Even a rogue wave could throw you overboard if you weren’t watching. Our boats also had removable consoles that we would use during the warmer months, helping us to not only change the look of the boats, but also helping us see better out here than in these damn cabins!

Nonetheless, I really did love the chases. We’d had close chases in the past, but nothing either one of us weren’t able to get out of. I loved the thrill of working at night. Just knowing I could outrun these guys pretty much any night of the week was awesome.

Now about two minutes into this chase, I realize these guys are gaining on me. I begin thinking to myself, No way . . . what the hell? I start wondering if this is maybe one of the new faster boats the State was talking about getting to help out local marine enforcement in their effort to stop guys like us out here. But they’ve been bullshitting about that for years now. I’m thinking, Come on! We’re just trying to make an honest living out here, guys! Well, a living anyway!

As I look back again, I see that I haven’t put any distance between us. That being the case, I’m going to have to do some hiding, and quick!

It was bound to happen: the more of the bay these people kept closing to the clammers, the more poaching would take place. Some of us diggers figured the State really didn’t care about solving the pollution problem in the bay, not at all. If they ever did, then they wouldn’t be able to control the removal of clams as easily. They knew deeming these areas polluted made them a lot easier to close and manage. That was the main reason so many of the old-time baymen figured they kept closing these grounds: to have more control of it. Yes, there was a lot less bay bottom out here to work in than there used to be.

But right now, I’m thinking there’s still the same amount of places to hide out there as there always was!

Back on track now, I begin realizing that I’m going to have to do something different to shake these guys. They were closing in too fast for my liking. I know if they get up on me real close, they’ll attempt to ram the rear of my motor in an effort to break off a spark plug or two, bringing me to a stop. That isn’t going to happen, at least not tonight!

If these guys are good and really know what they were doing, they will have their running lights off and just follow my wake. My 150-horse outboard is cranking, throwing a trail of white water and spray for a quarter mile, making it real easy for these guys to follow me.

Looking out in front, off my bow, I can see a middle ground buoy coming up fast. I figure I need to make a turn to the north and get out of this open channel. I’ll take a heading north to the shoreline, making a run up onto the flats, the shallower water running just off the beach. Law enforcement generally won’t run in the shallow stuff. So I trim my outboard up a bit and make the run over to and up on the flats.

After another quick peek back, I realize I have lost sight of them. I’m thinking, Cool, maybe they gave up?

Looking out front again, I see the Moriches lighthouse coming up to my northwest, and just south of me sits the Moriches Inlet.

I stand up outside my cabin door with one hand on the wheel and the other holding on to the cabin door itself, hoping to get a better look behind me. Shit, there they are, just a few hundred yards back and still chasing. Okay, this is getting a little too close for comfort. It’s time to head out through the inlet and into the open Atlantic Ocean. I know damn well they’re not going to operate out there.

As I make my turn south, the light snow begins coming at me head-on, really hampering my vision. But I’ve got my bearings, and I know my heading. Just stay west of the upcoming small island, and I’ll be in good shape. I take one more look back, still standing alongside my cabin door trying to find them and operate the boat. I spot them. I can make out their outline in front of the snow-hazed lights of the Moriches shoreline. I’m thinking, Whoever the hell it is chasing me is pretty good and real fast. Who are these guys?

As I approach the inlet, the waters under me become turbulent. Tide rolling in and wind whipping around all make my boat roll and dance around a bit more than I care to deal with right now. But before I can dip back into my cabin, boom!

I’m pushed forward against my cabin door. The snowy deck of my boat not allowing my rubber boots to grip the floor, I hit the door opening hard. Still holding on to my wheel and sliding down to my knees, I come to a hard stop. I can hear my engine roaring as reeds and cattails slip alongside my boat. The abrupt stop leaves me confused and disoriented for a moment.

Then it hits me. Shit! I’ve run aground! I’m stuck.

I quickly reach into my cabin for the controls and turn the engine off. Dumbfounded for a moment, I begin laughing—you know, the crazy, slightly nervous laugh you have when you’ve done something stupid and realize just how dumb it was.

While still stunned and just getting my bearings, I hear and then see them as their boat, still illuminated by its navigation lights, race by my position. So I sit