Friday, December 14, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | CannonBeachGazette.com • A9
THE
DORY
MEN
By Nancy McCarthy
Cannon Beach Gazette
I
n his new book about the Cannon
Beach dory fleet, Peter Lindsey
does more than “just movin’ the
water around,” as the title hints.
He dives deep into the dory boat cul-
ture, tracing the history of the small
fishing boats from Europe to America’s
east coast and, finally, to the 20-foot-
long West Bank dories that “slipped off
the sands of Cannon Beach.”
A trained folklorist with a passion
for language, Lindsey repeats the stories
told to him by fishers who spent much
of the 1970s in those boats seeking
salmon, coho, cod, rockfish and crabs.
He also provides a dory glossary, a
list of captains and their boats, numer-
ous photos from local collections, draw-
ings by Astoria artist Sally Lackaff and
the cover art by local artist Drea Rose
Frost.
“The dory fleet that operated here
in Cannon Beach was an integral part
of the community,” Lindsey said in an
interview.
Concerned that memories of the dory
era were fading, he decided to revive
them. Rainmar Bartl, of Cannon Beach,
helped him organize the book, raise
funds and find photos, a publisher and
local editors.
“It’s a slice of Cannon Beach history,
a rather unique one,” Bartl said. “It’s the
type of history I like, focused on what
folks in a community do for a living,
told through stories. I like Peter’s sto-
rytelling and wanted to help bring it to a
wider public.”
Hooked
Lindsey’s family has a history on
the water. His older brother, Richard,
built sailboats and yachts in Califor-
nia and Florida, and younger brother
Tim worked for him. Eventually, Tim
returned to Cannon Beach with a dory
Historic photo of dory men at Haystack Rock.
boat.
“He and I decided to try commer-
cial fishing because there were quite a
number of people going off the beach
every day here fishing, right by the
Needles next to Haystack Rock,” Lind-
sey said. “It was kind of enchanting.
You would go out in the morning and
come back at dusk.”
After their first foray into the ocean
— where they caught 65 Chinook
salmon — “we were hooked. It was
good fun.”
Every summer for 15 years, Lind-
sey spent time on the ocean, often in
his own dory, the Schmedlow, trying
to replicate that glorious first catch but
never managing to do so.
“The boat was only 20 feet long but
very seaworthy, considering the size.
You put that on the ocean, and it was
like a mote in the eye of God, a speck
on the landscape,” Lindsey said.
But things can go “dramatically
wrong quickly on a boat in the ocean,”
Lindsey admitted. Sometimes a wave
would “erupt out of nowhere, and there
was a big green wall, and you were
under powered with your motor going
into it, and it would cave in on top of
you.
“Sometimes people died, and, thank
God (Lindsey knocked on a wooden
table top), I didn’t.”
Yet, he added, “there’s something
exhilarating about it.”
The camaraderie among the fisher-
men and women and the potential to
make money superseded the terror, he
said.
‘Just memories’
Dory fishing in Cannon Beach ended
shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court
decided in 1979 that Washington State
tribes were entitled to half of the annual
salmon harvest.
Other factors reduced the inventory
as well: adverse agricultural practices,
dam blockages and increased fishing by
modern vessels with updated technol-
ogy, Lindsey said.
“We were quite disappointed …
We were very close, we were good
friends. We’d have fish fries in the
summer, and, occasionally, we’d have
a winter doryman’s ball. We’d get
together, all of us who fished in the
summertime.
“Now, it’s just memories.”
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