Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

The next morning soon after breakfast Mr. James called for his friends, and a little later they started out to visit one of the canneries in order to get some idea of the method by which one of the chief sources of wealth of the Province was handled.

On their way down to the wharf, Mr. James talked interestingly on the subject. "The fish," he explained, "are all caught in ordinary drift gill nets which are cast off from the boats in the usual manner, and are allowed to drift down the stream with the current, meeting the advancing salmon which are swarming up the river. The other day I got from Ewing's cannery the record of the catch of a few of the boats, on one or two average days. For example, on August ninth five boats took nine hundred and seventy fish; the same day six boats took one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven fish. On August tenth, six boats took one thousand four hundred and ninety-two fish, and on August eleventh six boats took one thousand five hundred and thirty-eight fish."

"Now, these fish," Mr. James went on, "are chiefly sock-eyes, and average from eight to ten pounds in weight, but among them are a good many 'Spring salmon' which the books call quinnat, and these run from fifty up to seventy and eighty and even a hundred pounds. These records I have just given you give an average of about two hundred and forty-four fish to the boat, or rather more than two thousand pounds. Now, of course, the boats cannot take up their nets and make long journeys to the wharves to unload their fish. That would be an unnecessary waste of time, and would not pay, so that at all hours of the day and night steamers patrol the river, collecting from the row boats that do the drifting the fish they have netted. When a steamer gets a load she comes and ties up at the wharf and there unloads her fish. You will see them presently now, for here is where we turn in."

Leaving the main street they turned down an alley and entered a loosely put up wooden building, from which came a strong odor of fish which showed it to be a cannery. Mr. James pushed through the building without stopping until they reached the wharf where they saw a tug tied up. Great piles of shapely glittering fish were lying on her deck, and working over them were men with poles, in the end of each of which was a spike. Each man on the deck pierced a fish with the spike on his pole and threw it up on the wharf where lay a great pile of its fellows. They threw out the fish just as a farmer would throw hay out of a wagon with a pitchfork.

Hugh and Jack had never seen so many fish before, and for a little while were almost stunned by their mass. No one paid any attention to them, but each person went on with his or her work. At one end of the pile stood a couple of Indians who were taking fish from the wharf, and throwing them one by one into a large tub of clear water. Immediately next to this tub stood a row of tables at which were people armed with long knives. A woman next to the tub reached down, got a fish from it, placed it on the table before her and removed the head, sliding the fish along to a man next to her, who, by a single motion of his knife removed the entrails and cut off the fins and tail. The fish, thrust again along the table, fell into a tub of clean water and was washed by an attendant. Thrown on an adjacent cutting table, it was passed along to a cam, armed with knives about four inches apart, which was constantly revolving, thus cutting the fish into lengths. The pieces were then placed in the tin cans which were filled up even-full.

Jack and Hugh stared at these different processes which went on without a pause. It seemed as if each operator might be a machine. Each one performed a certain task and only that, and beyond that did nothing but shove each fish along, then reach back and take another. The knives, it seemed, always fell in the same place, and cut off the same parts with the same precision. It was a rising and falling of arms and knives, in the preparation of a food which was soon to be distributed all over the globe.

At length they reached the cutting table. "Here," said Mr. James, "you can see how systematically the thing is done. It isn't enough that the fish should be cut into pieces, but it must be cut into sizes that are just about long enough to fill the can so that as few motions as possible need be gone through with to get the can level full."

"There! do you see!" he went on, pointing to a Chinaman, who with two or three motions of his right hand filled a can, just even-full; and then slid it along the table to a man next to him, who slipped on it the circular cover of tin and passed this on to the next man, who was handling a soldering iron and a bit of solder. In but a second, as it seemed to Jack, the soldering of the can was finished, and then with a push the can went on to join those which were being bunched up by the Chinamen, and placed in a shallow tray made of strap iron. When this tray was full a hook on the end of a chain running down from a traveller near the ceiling was hooked into a ring attached to chains running to the four corners of the tray, the tray was lifted, and run along the traveller a short distance until it stood over a vat of boiling water. It was then dropped into this, hung there for a few moments; and then, rising again, moved a little farther along the traveller, and descended on a table. By this table stood a Chinaman, holding a small wooden mallet with which he tapped each can.