Shaky Business Read online

  Talk turned to further trade in the future as Crick hoisted a burlap bushel bag aboard in exchange for about a pound each of fried oyster fixings and a bottle of Pepper Pete hot sauce. Saul then offered them a bunch more oysters and threw in a big catfish he had caught not long ago but Hobe said that they had more than enough for a hearty meal already.

  `Now iffin’, that is if you all want to have something special, then you need to set sail and come by Miss Bell’s restaurant come this Sunday and we can maybe trade some more flour and such over a good goose dinner. I got a couple ganders that need killing and for more grain goods to trade for we can make ourselves a little celebration, that is if you could maybe see your way clear to come up with about 5 lbs. of flour for her to make biscuits with. She sure been wanting to make up a batch of biscuits with something other than that old cattail flour we make from the bayou. I also got some hive honey to spread on them and a few sips of hoo haw jack white lightening to grease the trading talk up with.” Saul offered with a big grin.

  “Now that sounds awful tempting and tasty. Where is this Miss Bell’s place at from here?”” Hobe asked.

  “About 7 miles back by the mouth of the river on the right. Used to be an old red snapper fishing camp, big white building next to the boat ramp, you can’t miss it.” Saul declared and then fiddled with his beard a bit wringing out oyster juice while explaining that Hobe should ring a bell or honk a boat horn or something when approaching as folks in his community were still a bit jumpy even though nothing too terrible had happened along the waterfront for awhile.

  “Miss Bell makes a fine oyster stew in her kitchen but I am sort of getting tired of it, ain’t nothing but spring greens to go in it until the gardens start producing but she manages to spice it up and change it around a bit with some goats milk or something.” Otis offered hoping the strangers could be talked into going.

  “I tell you what Saul; I think I can go you one better on that deal if you like my terms. For me and my crew to get the blessed chance to taste some of that wonderful roast goose that you are offering on Sunday I will sweeten the pot. I tell you what, after all this time since we left home a month ago of us barely even finding fresh critter meat for the stew pot, we got to do this up right. Tell you what old Saul: I will donate some extra cornmeal and dehydrated celery, spices and onions for whomping up a big batch of stuffing also to go along with that delicacy! I bet your friend Miss Bell has got her a great recipe to use it in that we can all benefit from!” Hobe declared as Crick and Morgan conferred in the background with Randal on whether or not it was a good idea to stick around the bay much longer even as appealing as that feast sounded like it might be. They also wondered amongst themselves about whether or not they should be staying in this area the next couple days when their obligations to the traders’ bank and finding themselves a trading base back on the mainland were pressing.

  The original plan was for them to spend a day or two exploring and then go back to Panama City or survey the area around Mexico beach and set up some form of more permanent housekeeping.

  “How many folks would you say were in the same line of business as you are Saul that might be still out here fishing and getting by do you think?” Hobe asked pondering if this situation was a supply chain that needed more studying before it was overlooked.

  “Well let me see now who all I can remember is left still left alive and kicking these days. I would say that before all the lights went out that there was maybe about 300 of us tongers making a decent living at it to be considered. Now mind you that includes the big motor boats that can’t get off the dock anymore and we got to keep in mind the oyster wars thinned us out pretty good, so I would say oh, maybe there is 50 or so of us left. Some of these folks switched off tonging to do regular fishing or whatever but I still count them as a tonger ‘cause they can and do go out for shellfish when they want to. If you are going to be sailing these parts around here a day or so, you will likely bump into several oyster men. Most of them are just friendly poor folks like me trying to get by but a few of them fish heads are downright pirates posing as oystermen so be careful with your Howdy do’s.” Saul declared thinking these city sailors lacked a lot of understanding about kindness being mistaken for weakness with some of those hard cases he disdained that worked these waters.

  “What do you mean by pirates?” Crick inquired unconsciously reaching for his .308 rifle and casting a wary gaze at the horizon.

  “Crick it ain’t flying the Jolly Roger and evidencing any Hollywood movie intents that they evil you need to look out for. No they are not that easy to spot and tend to be low life sneaky bastards and opportunists looking for an easy mark to rob. They set themselves up and their boats appearing all calm and non-threatening like. You would think all they are doing is catching oysters and when the unwary boat passes by and hails them they get all friendly until they gain your trust and that’s when they try to rob you at the point of a gun when they think your guard and gumption is down.” Otis declared thinking about the number of derelict “ghost” boats they had encountered just aimlessly floating by themselves with no crew on board or worse with evidently murdered corpses bloating in the sun on bullet shattered decks.

  “Ha! You should see your faces! HA! HA! Relax, no cause for you all to be worrying about us none, we are some of the good guys. We are the real deal and always been so you might say, just regular old tired smelly oystermen trying to make a living!” Spoman said laughing at the second looks Hobe’s crew started sheepishly giving them in contemplation they had been had.

  “Listen up, I will tell you how to avoid the bad sorts, Captain Hobe. You see the way you spots them is that they are fishing in deeper water than a tonger would fish and there won’t be much evidence on the boat of them catching nothing. No shells or sacks full if you know what I means.” Saul declared advising them to look for certain clues in case someone was just hanging out in the channel looking for a boat to prey upon.

  “Well that’s good information to know, you got any other tips or tricks for us to maybe remember and heed?” Crick asked thinking he would be better off on more familiar terra firma to play this survival game he found himself in than trying to play like he was a Marine.

  “Well first off I would say for you boys to stay away from the dredgers, there might still be a few operating around still but we fixed their wagon about coming around here awhile back. Two things to consider if you see one, first is if they got gas to run a boat motor, where and how are they getting it? Can’t be that good or honest. If they are doing it old style manual then they mercenary in their attitudes and always have been. Not the kind of company you want to keep.” Saul said spiting some tobacco over the side of his small craft.

  Tongers and dredgers were (and still are) are considered by most two different "breeds" among oystermen. An oysterman working his tongs in relatively shallow water, usually preferred a stable, small boat, possibly with a sail, more or less flat bottomed, possibly with a convenient centerboard, ideally big enough to accommodate two tongers plus possibly a boy, who would continuously sort the catch as it came on board. Of course, the craft was also expected to accommodate many bushels of oysters. Many tongers also preferred their boats to be more versatile, as they sometimes engaged in tonging for clams, crabbing and occasionally liked to do a bit of fishing as well.

  An oysterman working a dredge needed a considerably larger boa and had more overhead to consider than a traditional tonger. He required at minimum a sailing craft, sleek and powerful enough to pull (at least) one heavily laden dredge effectively. For smaller oyster sloops of the dredging type, a crew of 3 to 4 men was generally necessary. More men were needed for handling small schooners but power boats made most of them a thing of the past.

  Connecticut was considered the birth place of an oyster sail boat design called "sharpie". Although not powerful enough to pull a dredge, a sharpie was ideally suited for tonging. A Mr. James Goodsell was credited to have invented sharpies in around 1848.
They were about 27 to 36 feet long, narrow, flat bottomed, with a round stern, usually equipped with one mast (occasionally also two), no jib, a center board and a rudder, with two strong brass-tipped wooden poles, about thirty feet long having a stout diameter of about 6 inches in circumference.

  These poles usually served as anchors for the vessel. If the oystermen happened to find themselves stuck in a prolonged wind lull, they could return to shore by paddle and sometimes polling. Sharpies in one form or another ultimately became very popular with tongers clear down to the Gulf of Mexico.

  A similar sail boat called the "Chesapeake Bay Skiff" was also a popular choice in the latter half of the 19th century. Both of these small sail boats shared similarities with a French oyster sail boat design called a "Pinasse", which had already been in use in Arcachon, France, since the late 18th century.

  Oystermen who use a dredge are of course called "dredgers". Historically, never much love was lost between tongers and dredgers. Historically, tongers often deeply disliked dredgers, I mean violently disliked them particularly when dredgers efficiently wiped out oyster beds in both shallow and deep water in an unsustainable manner. Tonging always insured a future harvest and way of life where as dredging could ruin shoals.

  A common design of a small dredge with hand winch

  Oyster dredges consist of a steel frame, triangular or square, about three to six feet wide, with a steel mesh sack. The strong base of the frame operates like a blade and sometimes features rake-like prongs welded to them. By the mid 1700s, dredges were in common use along the coast of France and England. Early on, the mesh sacks were made of woven seal skin strips for wear. Later the sacks were made of steel links and that’s where the damage really became more apparent.

  The size of the openings in the mesh were (and are) always considered important as well, as the dredge sack will flush out much of the small oysters and debris and retain the rest. By the 19th century, more than a dozen different dredge designs existed some better or worse than others depending on viewpoints. Many more designs were also developed in the 20th century.

  It takes a fairly large sailing or motor vessel to drag one or more dredges along the bottom. In those days, it also took a lot of experience to anticipate the bottom conditions and calculate the proper angle/distance/speed of the dredge in relation to the boat. There are skills inherent in every form of oystering, mostly lost now amongst boat captains.

  The skipper of a sailing vessel like a skipjack was often constantly busy. The wind direction could change, sudden squalls could occur, the sea could get rough, storms could descend with little warning or a favorable wind was simply nowhere to be found at times.

  When you find yourself pulling a dredge with a sailboat in a straight line at a steady speed moving along at no faster than two to four knots (so to be careful the dredge does not start lifting off the bottom), these skills took great concentration.

  Once the bag was deemed to be full, it was winched on board by hand. Properly operated on some nice rich oystering grounds, dredges were extremely effective and highly profitable. Thus the mercenary aspect of ‘fish for the day not for tomorrow’ thoughts. Some dredges could harvest more than a thousand oysters in one pass (called a "lick").

  There were also plenty of hits and misses attached to this type of job. It was a quite common occurrence that the dredges only contained a bunch of mud, rocks and empty shells after working a bed. Experienced skippers would sometimes take one of their long boat hooks, touch the dredge cable and feel the vibrations, hence "hearing" the bottom. Once a promising natural reef was found, the spot was often marked by some kind of temporary buoy to mark the bounty. The discovered oyster bed was harvested out as quickly as possible as news of a rich oyster bed spread quickly and lured lots more dredgers to try their lines in no time.

  Tongers as a whole had few such problems and got along with each other much better.

  2

  Miss Bell’s Place

  Hobe and crew sailed around the bay for a somewhat carefree but dangerous and much information gathering day or two before heading towards Miss Bell’s place for their anticipated and long awaited feast of some rarity called roast goose with stuffing. They had met a variety of people on several other Tonger boats and basicaly decided from the consensus of all the fishermen they met was that Miss Bell’s place was as safe as anywhere these days and basicaly good folks seemed to be living and flourishing on that particular river that emptied into the bay.

  Nobody could give them very much information about other surviving groups further out; the standard reply by them was pretty much, “We stay on the water and we stay to ourselves.” This was not what Crick and crew wanted to hear but they could totally understand and respected it as a smart idea to avoid others when able. It was not only not safe quite often to associate outside of close friends and family in this grid down world, it could also be pretty much quite heart-rending to see others plight outside your comfort zone and be unable to do anything for strangers except threaten them if need be. Foreboding death and desperation was the order of the day and if helping someone else survive jepordized your own chances the chance for an amiable encounter were greatly reduced.

  Saul’s group on the other hand seemed to thrive by having the help of a very old established small fishing community to see them through these hard times just like they had for generations of other troubles big and small. For his village-like group, the center of community life centered on an old wooden clapboard church called the “Chapel of Ease” and Miss Bell’s place and not necessarily in that order which irked the church ladies no end and the proprieter of the drinking establishment was regarded with distaste by them of more so-called refined tastes.

  It was an interesting sign of the times just how many small enclaves of people had banded together like this and remained aloof from others by tradition or group perceived necessity. Traders had to have the gift of gab and diplomacy to overcome this inate fear of theirs of strangers or for that matter any kind of not born here outsiders in general, yet if there was a need there was usally someone willing to undertake the risks of travelling and trading for a profit.

  Distant centers of trade and commerce in the form of traders outposts were visited by the more adventurous and trusted members of a group when needed but often times self sufficency was the byword and except for an occasional traveling peddler passing by sharing news and selling something very basic the uncharted bits of humanity trying to survive on the coastal waters remained remote and cut off from the rest of the world.

  Hobe and crew themselves were on a trade mission of sorts. However, when all things were considered, practically each one could be seen having a different motivation, consensus and profit angle to consider. It didn’t divide them because they also remained bound together by the promise of being bank rolled by the Central Traders Bank and David’s “Our End Of the Lake” trading group if providence and opportunity presented itself to the explorers. How that was ultimately accomplished remained up for debate.

  This caused a bit of bickering amongst them as to exactly what dreamed up notion had priorty and what did not. As far as trade goods on hand and available other than cash went, Hobe had the boat loaded with his own hand selected and paid for merchandise and there was no room for any other additional supplies or inputs from the crew.

  It was his mission, his boat and it was definitely his first and original idea to come to Florida to begin with he reminded them. That and he didn’t take it very well at all to being pushed in one direction or another very easily if he had his sights on something. He had no problem pointing this out and was known to often remind Randal personally that he was just there because he needed a first mate and he had did him a big favor by picking him as a crewmember before the soldiers of the K-9 camp hung him from an oak tree for a misunderstanding back at the Trade Rendezvous.

  Being in this position, Randal was advised that he should never consider anything other than blindly supporting his capta
in as far as Hobe was concerned and this warranted no dissent from him unless he felt like finding himself stranded on shore in some distant locale with just what he had brought with him.

  Crick and Morgan on the other hand were a different case. They had both orginally asked to go along on this trip merely as his friends and fellow adventurers and it wasn’t until David had finagled to drop a big pot of money and influence into the mix amongst them that all this extra responsibility and ulterior personal motives and grumbling had started up. To make matters worse add Crick and Clems interests and money confounding issues once David’s motives were known and with Crick’s own ideas and business plans making a mess of things it was hard to figure out just what it is he wanted. Well not really, first and foremost Crick wanted a trading boat, specifically to his mind and decidedly vivid imagination a great big sailing catamaran they had yet to find for sale or salvage to him.

  Randal himself had his own dreams and expectations eventually and wanted off the boat and a business anyway on land he could get it and Morgan pretty much wanted whatever it was Crick wanted but wanted to somehow get his own slice of the pie or franchise on whatever it was they all ended up doing.