The Western Flyer: Steinbeck's Boat, the Sea of Cortez, and the Saga of Pacific Fisheries

By Kevin M. Bailey

In January 2010, the Gemini was moored in the Swinomish Slough on a Native American reservation near Anacortes, Washington. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the rusted and dilapidated boat was in fact the most famous fishing vessel ever to have sailed: the original Western Flyer, immortalized in John Steinbeck’s nonfiction classic The Log from the Sea of Cortez.

In this book, Kevin M. Bailey resurrects this forgotten witness to the changing tides of Pacific fisheries. He draws on the Steinbeck archives, interviews with family members of crew, and more than three decades of working in Pacific Northwest fisheries to trace the depletion of marine life through the voyages of a single ship. After Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts—a pioneer in the study of the West Coast’s diverse sea life and the inspiration behind “Doc” in Cannery Row—chartered the boat for their now-famous 1940 expedition, the Western Flyer returned to its life as a sardine seiner in California. But when the sardine fishery in Monterey collapsed, the boat moved on: fishing for Pacific ocean perch off Washington, king crab in the Bering Sea off Alaska, and finally wild Pacific salmon—all industries that would also face collapse.

As the Western Flyer herself faces an uncertain future—a businessman has bought her, intending to bring the boat to Salinas, California, and turn it into a restaurant feature just blocks from Steinbeck’s grave—debates about the status of the California sardine, and of West Coast fisheries generally, have resurfaced. A compelling and timely tale of a boat and the people it carried, of fisheries exploited, and of fortunes won and lost, The Western Flyer is environmental history at its best: a journey through time and across the sea, charting the ebb and flow of the cobalt waters of the Pacific coast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9780226116938

Book preview

The Western Flyer

Kevin M. Bailey

The Western Flyer

Steinbeck’s Boat, the Sea of Cortez, and the Saga of Pacific Fisheries

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Chicago and London

KEVIN M. BAILEY is the founding director of Man & Sea Institute and affiliate professor at the University of Washington. He formerly was a senior scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and is the author of Billion-Dollar Fish: The Untold Story of Alaska Pollock, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2015 by Kevin M. Bailey

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

Printed in the United States of America

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11676-1 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-11693-8 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226116938.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bailey, Kevin McLean, author.

The Western Flyer: Steinbeck’s boat, the Sea of Cortez,

and the saga of Pacific fisheries / Kevin M. Bailey.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-11676-1 (cloth: alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-226-11693-8 (e-book) 1. Fisheries—Pacific Coast (U.S.) 2. Sardine fisheries—Pacific Coast (U.S.) 3. Western Flyer (Ship) 4. Steinbeck, John, 1902–1968. Sea of Cortez. I. Title.

SH214.4.B35 2015

639.2—dc23 2014032434

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

Prologue

1: INTRODUCTION. An Iconic Boat, Steinbeck, and Pacific Fisheries

2: WESTERN FLYER. Setting the Stage

3: THE SEA OF CORTEZ. A Grand Trip on the Western Flyer

4: THE CALIFORNIA SARDINE FISHERY. A Story of Fortune, Politics, and Woe

5: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SARDINES? The Ecological View of Ed Ricketts

6: ROSE-COLORED SEA. Captain Dan Luketa and the Pacific Ocean Perch Fishery

7: NORTH TO ALASKA. The Return of the Western Flyer to the Aleutians and the Red King Crab Fishery

8: THE GEMINI YEARS. A Tale of the Red-Fleshed Pacific Salmon

9: THE LONG ROAD HOME. End of the Voyage

Acknowledgments

Notes

References

Index

Prologue

One merges into another, groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air. And the units nestle into the whole and are inseparable from it.

John Steinbeck & Ed Ricketts, Sea of Cortez

The Western Flyer was a fishing boat that John Steinbeck leased in 1940 for a six-week cruise to the Gulf of California. Steinbeck was accompanied by a colorful crew, including his friend Ed Ricketts, better known for Steinbeck’s portrayal of him as Doc in his novel Cannery Row. After the voyage, Steinbeck and Ricketts wrote the story of their trip, Sea of Cortez, and the Western Flyer became a celebrated icon of American literature. Then the boat disappeared from sight.

Over forty years later when Michael Hemp started the Cannery Row Foundation,¹ a local resident of Salinas named Bob Enea approached Hemp and said, "How’d you like to have the Western Flyer?" Enea was the nephew of both Sparky Enea and Tony Berry, two of the original crew in the Sea of Cortez journey. Enea had been looking for the boat for years, and by back-checking the boat’s radio call sign WB4404,² which stays with the vessel forever, he found that the name had been changed to Gemini. Then it was just a matter of tracking her down.

Enea located the Western Flyer in Anacortes, Washington, where the boat was working as a salmon tender. In 1986 contact was made with the owner, Ole Knudson, and Enea reported that he had asked about buying the boat, but Knudson said that it wasn’t for sale.³ Enea and Hemp dreamed of returning the Western Flyer to Cannery Row in a gala celebration. Just imagine the scene of former Captain Tony Berry piloting the boat into Monterey Harbor with all manner of vessels and spectators lining the channel jetties and wharves, blowing their horns and cheering with great fanfare. Hemp and Enea were excited by the idea. Maybe they would haul tourists back to the Sea of Cortez as a way to raise funds and maintain the boat.

Later, owner Knudson said of Enea’s attempts to buy the boat, He never got back to me, so he must have run out of money or something.⁴ However, Enea said that he had contacted Knudson many times over the years, but Knudson always said he didn’t want to sell the Gemini.

Then in 1993 Enea received a call from Knudson out of the blue. Knudson said he had left fishing to work in construction and wasn’t using the Western Flyer anymore. Enea considered how he might raise the funds needed to buy the boat. Time and opportunity slipped by. In 2009 Enea contacted Knudson, who Enea said now told him that he wanted $100,000 for the boat. At this point, Enea formed a nonprofit organization called the Western Flyer Project to raise the funds to buy the boat, but the community wasn’t much interested in donating money for the cause and the effort sputtered. In November 2010, Enea organized a fund-raiser for the Western Flyer Project. An article in the Salinas newspaper announced the gala dinner, and the event raised $10,000.

Other eyes were watching and saw the news of the fund-raiser. Just after the event, in December 2010, Knudson called Enea to say that he had another offer on the table. Enea would have to come up with the sale price in cash immediately, plus another $600,000 was needed in an escrow account to restore the Flyer. Knudson said of those funds, So I know you’ll rebuild the boat. Enea’s hopes were dashed as he realized this was a nearly impossible task in such a short time.

The other offer was from a developer in Florida named Gerry Kehoe, who had been alerted to the newspaper article about the fund-raiser. Kehoe had also been looking for the Western Flyer.⁵ When Enea couldn’t come up with the money, the developer closed the deal to buy the boat in January 2011.

Kehoe was well-known to Salinas residents for his negotiations with the city in 2002 to build a luxury Hilton Hotel resort in the run-down Oldtown district. The problem was that Hilton Inc. had no interest in a Salinas resort. The Hilton plan fell apart in 2005.⁶ The developer then put together a new plan, which included several restaurants and nightclubs, but no luxury Hilton. Part of this new plan was a boutique hotel with a restaurant on the ground floor.⁷

Mr. Kehoe’s development company owned several buildings in the Oldtown section of Salinas, including a former men’s clothing shop called Dick Bruhn—A Man’s Store, a handsome two-story brick building on South Main Street. After the purchase of the Western Flyer, he announced his plan to restore the boat to her original condition and somehow get the boat from Puget Sound down to Salinas, about a thousand miles. The new owner stated his intention to build a moat in the former haberdashery, dock the Western Flyer inside, and turn the 76-foot-long ship into a floating restaurant. They would serve meals to tourists on her aft deck.⁸ The boat would be accompanied by a simulated dock and colored fountains. Across the street would be a new complex of nightclubs and restaurants being developed by the businessman’s son. They estimated that the new business would bring $15 million of tourist money into the depressed economy of downtown Salinas.⁹ Kehoe is a serious man and sounds sincere when he talks about preserving some part of the Western Flyer as a museum to honor John Steinbeck.

When I visited the Western Flyer on a cold and gray day in January 2011, the boat was moored in a slough under the Twin Bridges near Anacortes, Washington.¹⁰ Now bearing the name of Gemini on her bow, she was rusted and dilapidated, contrasting with the swank new Swinomish tribal casino next door. It was a sad sight to behold. Afterward, the Flyer rested dormant in the slough for another eighteen months with blue tarps strewn over the deck and no obvious signs of restoration work.

Then in September 2012, a plank in the Western Flyer’s hull ruptured and the boat sank at its mooring. Immediately, the Coast Guard, the state Department of Ecology, the NOAA’s oil spill response team, the state Department of Natural Resources, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Swinomish Nation, and probably some other agencies swooped in on the site to investigate potential hazards, to inform the owner of the regulations, and to insure that he followed strict procedures to rectify the situation. Fines were levied, and spill prevention collars were set up. Divers descended to pump out the remaining fuel and oil.

Two weeks later, a salvage crew attempted to refloat the boat. The divers put straps under the hull and attached them to cables, and a giant derrick on a barge gently cradled her. The cables grew taut as the winch reeled in line. The Flyer seemed hesitant to rise up from the soft muck of the seabed where she’d rested for two weeks, like pulling your foot from sucking quicksand. But finally she broke free of the bottom, and her deck emerged, as water, mud, and seaweeds poured out of her portholes and doors. They pumped the sea out of the Flyer’s body and patched over the hole in the planking of her belly that had let the water in. She was a rusting carcass.

The Western Flyer Project supporters complained in the newspapers that the owner had neglected the boat. Enea said of Kehoe letting the boat sit for nearly two years and the subsequent sinking that the developer had bought the boat and pretty much destroyed it.¹¹ Kehoe volleyed back that if he hadn’t stepped in to buy it, the boat would have sank and nobody would have had the funds to raise her again. Then the Coast Guard would have destroyed the boat. He wrote back to them, "With God’s Blessing and Kehoe ‘stepping up to the plate’ the Western Flyer will be lifted, de watered [sic], remaining oil taken off and carefully disposed of, hull repaired to allow it to float and this happens this very week.¹² Kehoe said of the boat, It’s an American treasure. And of planting it in Salinas, It’s Steinbeck’s hometown. It’s appropriate."¹³

Kehoe said it cost $100,000 to raise the ship. Still, he was adamant about sticking to his plan. Sometime in the near future, the Western Flyer would embark from her moorage in the slough and head for her resting place in Salinas, where she would be turned into a restaurant with fine dining on the fantail, on the very deck where Doc Ricketts and John Steinbeck spent many hours drinking brandy, gazing at the night sky, and linking coastal ecology to the plight of man.

By now some alternative plans for the Flyer’s future were discussed.¹⁴ One story was that the boat would be restored and donated to a museum in Salinas. The director of the National Steinbeck Center, in Salinas, the logical recipient, said she hadn’t heard anything about that plan. Another story was that the cabin would be removed from the boat and brought down to Salinas for restoration. One prominent Salinas resident even suggested that the owner could turn the boat into a big planter if he so chose. It is, after all, private property, and nobody else had come up with the funds to buy the boat. Or maybe the owner would carry through on his original plan to completely restore the Flyer? Another rumor had the owner selling the hull to the Western Flyer Project while he would keep and restore selected parts, including the deckhouse.

But once again the Western Flyer commandeered the moment. After the Western Flyer was raised from the seabed in October 2012, it was moored at the same dock in the slough for several more months. Then on January 4, 2013, it bowed down once more for an encore and resubmerged into the mud. Former owner Ole Knudson said that sand fleas ate through the wood. This time it sat on the bottom for nearly six months. The boat was finally lifted to the surface in June 2013, and by now it was a decomposing hulk. Whole sections of the fir planking of the side railings had fallen off. The prow was rotted. The ship was crusted with mud and barnacles, and veiled with a gauze of seaweed. People said it looked like a ghost ship.

An argument over the Flyer played out in the newspapers. Kehoe offered to sell the boat to the Western Flyer Project or any other well-intentioned group if they made him whole, or, in other words, reimbursed him for his expenses.¹⁵ Many people expressed the view that somebody should do something, or that they themselves would help, but nobody stepped forward with genuine effort. Only Kehoe had the will and resources to rescue the boat.

Then the Western Flyer was towed to Port Townsend. By now Kehoe must have sunk a couple hundred thousand dollars into expenses related to the vessel’s two sinkings. The damage to the boat was extensive. He had a boat specialist estimate the cost of restoring the Western Flyer, which now was calculated at $1.5 million.¹⁶ As a businessman and an admirer of Steinbeck, Gerry Kehoe was disappointed. Meanwhile, there was a steady stream of visitors to the boat in dry dock. When I visited in August 2013, someone had pinned a picture of John Steinbeck to the boat as though it was his casket in a wake. People put their hands to the hull in reverence, as if touching the spirits of Steinbeck and Ricketts.

As the story of the Western Flyer has unfolded, it is perhaps fitting that Salinas is where the boat’s voyage will end. Although Steinbeck’s wife, Carol Steinbeck, once said, John really hated Salinas, you know,¹⁷ I tend to disagree. John Steinbeck loved Salinas as one might love a disappointing adolescent. He said, I am very much emotionally tied up in the place [Salinas]. It has a soul which is lacking in the East.¹⁸ Nelson Valjean, his biographer, wrote, He was a lover of hills and valleys, rocks and earth, dogs and ponies and people.¹⁹

John Steinbeck also loved boats. He wrote in the Sea of Cortez, The sight of a boat riding in the water clenches a fist of emotion in [a man’s] chest. A horse, a beautiful dog, arouses sometimes a quick emotion, but of inanimate things only a boat can do it. A boat’s sense of place represents the untethering of earthly