Posts Tagged ‘Fishing’
Phelps, Elizabeth
by Mira Dock (2000) PHELPS ELIZABETH [STUART] (1844-1911). Growing up in Andover, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Phelps was a lifelong resident of New England and had a summer home in Gloucester. She was a staunch feminist who participated in causes that ranged from temperance to conditions of factory workers. Though the main theme in her fifty-seven books is…
Read MoreSafina, Carl
by Rachel Earnhardt (2017) SAFINA, CARL (1955-). Carl Safina is a biologist, author, activist, and educator. Born on May 23, 1955, in Brooklyn, NY, Safina spent his childhood fishing, breeding pigeons, and playing music. In high school, he participated in a bird-banding survey on Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, an experience he…
Read MoreWhitman, Walt
by Philip A. Greasley (2000) WHITMAN, WALT[ER] (1819-1892). Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, near Huntington on northwestern Long Island. With almost two centuries of ancestral residence on the island and some seafaring tradition in his family, Whitman was naturally attuned to the ocean and its related occupations. Not until 1848 did he venture for…
Read MoreWhite, E. B.
by Hillary Frey and Mira Dock (2000) WHITE, E[LWYN]. B[ROOKS]. (1899-1983). Best known for his articles in The New Yorker and his children’s books, E. B. White reflected significantly upon his relationship with the sea in two important essays, “The Years of Wonder” and “The Sea and the Wind That Blows.” The first, written on…
Read MoreWarner, William W.
by Brian Anderson (2000) WARNER, WILLIAM W[HITESIDES]. (1920-2008). Naturalist-author William W. Warner was born in New York City. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade, and was awarded a Navy Commendation Medal. Warner is primarily known for his nonfiction work Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen,…
Read MoreWalcott, Derek
by Jill B. Gidmark (2000) WALCOTT, DEREK [ALTON] (1930-2017). Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in literature, Derek Walcott identifies in his life and work two primary inspirations: the Caribbean Sea and his mixed-race heritage. Born and raised in the harbor city of Castries, St. Lucia, grandson of two white men and two black women, Walcott…
Read MoreVukelich, George
by Donald P. Curtis (2000) VUKELICH, GEORGE (1927-1995). “[I]t was good to be on the Great Lakes,” wrote George Vukelich in 1955 to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal, after a spell as an ore boat deckhand. This sentiment pervades much of his work, including his only novel, Fisherman’s Beach (1962); collections of his newspaper…
Read MoreSlocum, Joshua
by Haskell Springer (2000; rev. 2021) SLOCUM, JOSHUA (1844-1909). Joshua Slocum, the first singlehanded circumnavigator and author of the classic Sailing Alone Around the World (1900), was born in Nova Scotia. At about sixteen he left home to work as a deepwater sailor and by 1869 commanded his first vessel. In 1871 he married Virginia Walker,…
Read MoreRudloe, Jack
by Dennis Berthold (2000) RUDLOE, JACK [J.] (1943- ). Born in New York, Jack Rudloe moved to Florida as a boy and began his self-education as a marine biologist. In 1964 he founded the Gulf Coast Specimen Company of Panacea, Florida, which collects marine specimens for laboratories around the world. A few years later he began…
Read MoreRichard, Mark
by Hugh Egan (2000) RICHARD, MARK (1955- ). Author of the sea novel Fishboy (1993), Mark Richard (pronounced ree-SHARD) has been, at different times in his life, disc jockey, newspaperman, photographer, and private investigator. As a young man, Richard took time off from his study of journalism at Washington and Lee University to work on fishing…
Read MoreOlson, Charles
by Ralph Maud (2000) OLSON, CHARLES [JOHN] (1910-1970). The poet Charles Olson was born and raised in the inland city of Worcester, Massachusetts, but the family always spent summers in the fishing port of Gloucester; widowed in 1935, his mother provided a permanent base there for Olson. It thus became the location where much of Olson’s…
Read MoreOgilvie, Elisabeth
by Brian Anderson (2000) OGILVIE, ELISABETH [MAY] (1917-2006). Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and soon thereafter uprooted to Maine, Elisabeth Ogilvie gained critical and popular attention for her first novel, High Tide at Noon (1944). The novel and its sequels, Storm Tide (1945) and The Ebbing Tide (1947), centered on the Bennetts, a family presiding over a…
Read MoreNorris, Frank
by Donald Yannella (2000) NORRIS, [BENJAMIN] FRANKLIN] (1870-1902). Although his short life was adventurous enough, including trips to Africa’s Transvaal and Cuba during the Spanish-American War, Frank Norris’ disposition to set two of his less successful novels partly at sea probably arose from his familiarity with the San Francisco Bay Area, where his family settled in…
Read MoreNordhoff, Charles, the elder
by John B. Hattendorf (2000) NORDHOFF, CHARLES, the elder (1830-1901). A journalist, Charles Nordhoff was born in Erwitte, a village in Westphalia, Prussia. At five, he emigrated with his parents to Ohio, where they died. Left an orphan in the care of a family in Cincinnati, he was apprenticed to a printer at age thirteen. After…
Read MoreMoore, Christopher
by Mira Dock (2000) MOORE, CHRISTOPHER K. (1957- ). Christopher Moore has lived on the California coast for over twenty years, using his experiences on diving and fishing boats around the world in two offbeat novels. Island of the Sequined Love Nun (1997) focuses on the protagonist’s job offer on Alualu Island northwest of Micronesia, his…
Read MoreMitchell, Joseph
by Eleanore MacLean (2014) MITCHELL, JOSEPH (1908-1996). Joseph Mitchell grew up in Fairmont, North Carolina, a farming town in the state’s coastal plains. In 1929 Mitchell moved to New York City and began his career working as a crime reporter and feature writer for The World, The Herald Tribune, and The World Telegram. In 1931 he…
Read MoreMatthiessen, Peter
by Eric G. Waggoner (2000) MATTHIESSEN, PETER (1927-2014). New York-born Peter Matthiessen has borne the double titles of author and naturalist since the beginning of his professional writing career. Son of an architect father who was also a trustee of the National Audubon Society, Matthiessen has continually demonstrated a deep respect for, and knowledge of, the…
Read MoreLowell, Robert, Jr.
by Sally C. Hoople (2000) LOWELL, ROBERT, JR [TRAILL SPENCE]. (1917-1977). Robert Lowell, the son of a naval officer, recalled in the poem, “Commander Lowell: 1887-1950” (Life Studies, 1959) how his father, in his postnaval life, would boom “Anchors Aweigh” in the bathtub and would frequent the Sunday Yacht Club and the Maritime Museum at Salem,…
Read MoreLongfellow, Henry Wadsworth
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-1882). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, at a time when that seaport was second in New England only to Boston in total tonnage engaged in maritime trade. Close to half a century later, in the poem “My Lost Youth” (1855)–his reminiscences of those early days–Longfellow’s…
Read MoreLincoln, Joseph Crosby
by Susan Raidy Klein (2000) LINCOLN, JOSEPH C[ROSBY]. (1870-1944). Joseph C. Lincoln, the descendant of a long line of a seafarers, was a prolific author of best-selling verses, stories, and novels that portrayed life along the shore of Cape Cod with nostalgia and humor. The son of Captain Joseph and Emily (Crosby) Lincoln, the author was…
Read MoreKöepf, Michael
by Mira Dock (2000) KÖEPF, MICHAEL (1940- ). Born in San Mateo, California, Michael Köepf is the son of a commercial fisherman. He grew up fishing and draws on his experiences as a commercial fishing-vessel captain for his novel The Fisherman’s Son (1998). The protagonist, Neil Kruger, is adrift in a raft off the California coast,…
Read MoreKesey, Ken
by Christopher Lee (2000) KESEY, KEN [ELTON] (1935-2001). Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and soon moved to Oregon, where he now lives. He developed a love of hunting and fishing as a child, and much of his writing employs the lush natural settings and small towns of the Pacific Northwest as fitting places…
Read MoreJewett, Sarah Orne
by John F. Hussey (2000) JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (1849-1909). Sarah Orne Jewett was born and raised in South Berwick, Maine, a dwindling shipping and manufacturing center. As a girl she listened to her paternal grandfather’s tales of life as a sea captain, skirting the embargo of 1807; some fifty years later South Berwick still reviled…
Read MoreJeffers, Robinson
by Gregg Allen Walker (2000) JEFFERS, [JOHN] ROBINSON (1887-1962). Robinson Jeffers, best known for his verse narratives set on California’s rugged northern coast, was born in Pennsylvania. In 1903 he moved with his family to Los Angeles and entered Occidental College, where he studied geology, astronomy, and biblical literature, graduating in 1905. In 1913, after graduate…
Read MoreHemingway, Ernest Miller
by Bickford Sylvester (2000) HEMINGWAY, ERNEST MILLER (1899-1961). Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (1952) and the Nobel Prize in literature (1954), grew up in Oak Park, Illinois. Except when rough water forced them to go by train, he and his family crossed Lake Michigan every summer until 1917. In his teens,…
Read MoreHayden, Sterling
by James F. Millinger (2000) HAYDEN, STERLING [RELYEA WALTER] (1916-1986). Born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, Sterling Hayden quit school at sixteen to join the crew of a sailing ship. He served as seaman aboard fishing vessels and sailing ships out of New England ports from 1932 to 1936, was first mate on Irving Johnson’s…
Read MoreGalloway, Les
by Haskell Springer (2000) GALLOWAY, LES [EDWARD WILLIAM] (1919-1990). A commercial fisherman for most of his life, Les Galloway also wrote fiction, publishing short sea stories in several periodicals. Of Great Spaces (1987), shared with Jerome Gold, collects and reprints five Galloway stories, the most intellectually ambitious of which is “Last Passenger North, or the…
Read MoreFerrini, Vincent
by Joseph Flibbert (2000) FERRINI, VINCENT (1913-2007). Vincent Ferrini was born into a blue-collar, immigrant family struggling to earn a living in the shoe factories of Lynn, Massachusetts. His first volume of poems, No Smoke (1941), records the depression-era deprivations of his early years. A reluctant graduate of high school, Ferrini read voraciously from the…
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