“…Well, once we got the boat loaded with fish, we’d steam into the plant. We’d get in to tie up, and one of the guys from the dock, the night watchman, would come down. If it was during, say, one or two o-clock in the morning, before the plants even started to open up, they’d start pumping the fish out. They’d have somebody there. They would put that pump in, and we’d put water in the hole, and they’d pump them from the boat up to the plants, and put them in the tanks up there. Then, once we got it all, the holes cleaned out, we’d put salt back aboard or ice aboard, and be ready to go back out that next afternoon or night.”
Clell Genthner captained sardine carriers,fishing off the coast of Maine in the 1950’s through the 1990’s. He supplied fish to the sardine canneries that dotted the coast of Maine.
Read the full interview transcript
August 29, 2011
Damariscotta, ME
Interviewer: Keith Ludden
Recommended citation: Genthner, Clell, Oral History Interview, August 29, 2011 by Keith Ludden, Page #, Oral History and Folklife Research. Online: https://www.oralhistoryandfolklife.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CLELL-GENTHER-interview-FINAL.pdf.
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