Diesel-powered boats fish Bristol Bay’s waters by the hundreds, but it wasn’t always that way.
Motorized fishing vessels were once banned in Bristol Bay. And in their place, sailboats dominated the commercial fishery until the early 50s. The late Harvey Samuelson was one fisherman who sailed for salmon. His quotations used in this story are from a 2005 interview that aired on KDLG in a Bristol Bay oral history program called “Our Story.”
“We didn't have no reels or anything like that,” Samuelson told KDLG at the time. “It was all manhandling wooden corks – it’d get awful heavy. Now you’ve got plastic floats, corks.”
Samuelson said without a motorized vessel, the job was not easy.
“Sailing was a lot of fun,” he said. “But to make a living in a sailboat was sort of tough.”
Tim Troll is the creator of “Our Story,” who interviewed Samuelson. He’s also director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust and author of the book, Sailing for Salmon. The commercial sockeye fishery used to be federally managed, and Troll says the US Fish & Wildlife Service finally allowed power boats to fish in 1951.
“There were still more sailboats out there than powerboats that first year,” Troll said. “But within two years, three years, the sailboats were totally gone, or converted to power boats themselves.”
This year is the 75th anniversary of the final year of mandated sailboat fishing in Bristol Bay.
Troll and the Bristol Bay Historical Society are honoring the historic milestone at this year’s Fishtival in Naknek with boats, books, and beer.
Troll says the sail will be raised on a restored Bristol Bay fishing sailboat called the Libby 76 at the Seas the Day celebration on Friday. The boat is called a double ender for its similarly cut bow and stern.
“[It’s] probably the epitome of that sort of 19th century boat building,” said Troll.
The boat made its return to the Bay during the record breaking salmon run of 2022, where it dipped its net in the water for the first time in decades. Troll and a team restored the Libby 76 in Homer, and sailed it back to Bristol Bay to participate in the historic season.
Troll is also publishing a new edition of his book Sailing for Salmon, which now includes a section on the Libby 76’s return journey home.
“The goal of getting Libby 76 back to Bristol Bay was to have an example of what it was like to fish in Bristol Bay during the sailboat years,” he said. “It is, after all, a fishery that was born on the wind.”
When boats were mandated to use sails, fishermen were cannery employees in processor-issued boats, like the Libby 76. Troll says that sail fishing became obsolete in most places throughout the country in the 1920s. But the continued ban on motors in Bristol Bay was a cannery-supported federal regulation, under the guise of conservation.
“A lot of it had to do with canneries being able to control their fishermen – worried about having powerboats that would create an independent fishery,” Troll said.
In his interview, Harvey Samuelson said it also kept costs for canneries low.
“Because it's cheap operation, cheap way to get fish,” he said.
Samuelson was one of the fishermen working to lift the ban on power boats. He said unions were a critical part of this effort but that collective organization is missing from the Bay in the new century.
“We had a fishermen's union. Something that's lacking today is any kind of fishing organizations here in the bay. There's none, absolutely none – it hurts to see that,” Samuelson said on “Our Story” in 2005. “There's one of the biggest natural resources on the face of the earth, and no organization to take care of it. Fishermen’s got absolutely no political clout today. They can pay them whatever they want.”
LaRece Egli is the executive director of Bristol Bay Historical Society, which is partnering with the Bristol Bay Heritage Land trust to hoist the sails on the Libby 76.
She said New maritime technology during World War II and a deadly storm in 1948 were the final straws in ending the sail mandate.
“Many fishermen perished, and at that point, the labor unions were able to get enough attention from the federal government,” Egli said. “The Bureau of Fisheries did start to question the integrity of the conservation claims that the packing companies had been making.”
Even though sail boats haven't been hauling in Bristol Bay salmon in many years, Egli says the region’s sailing roots, embodied in the Libby 76, have shaped today’s fishery.
“Somehow, this boat just seems to have a history that just continues to find its depth in all of the most interesting historical threads that we can explore here in Bristol Bay,” she said.
Egli and Troll say their goal is to develop an ongoing maintenance plan so that the Libby 76 can return to the water, allowing more people to experience Bristol Bay’s sailing history first hand.
The Libby 76's sails will be hoisted at Naknek's Fishtival event, at the Seas the Day celebration on July 24. In partnership with the Bristol Bay Historical Society, Denali Brewing Company will also debut a new beer, the Double Ender Pale Ale, to honor the boat's history.
Get in touch with the author at jessie@kdlg.org
