Friday, July 30, 2010

The Last of the Old Salts (Published in N Magazine August 2010, pg 68)

*Photography by Joshua Blake (http://www.joshuablakephotography.com/)
*View published version with full photography at http://nantucketmagazine.net/VMAugust2010.php page 68
Nantucket’s cobblestone streets harken to the island’s early days, a time marked by isolation and hardship, but also prolific fishing. Much has changed since those rough-hewn stones were first set. Today’s racing yachts and pleasure cruisers are a far cry from Ishmael's harbor. Yet, there are a select few who carry on Nantucket’s fabled fishing trade.

Tracking these men down can be daunting. They operate outside Nantucket’s celebrated social circuit, shoving off under dawn’s foggy shroud, and return silhouetted by the setting sun. Out of cell phone range, they answer the call of screeching gulls and static VHF radio chatter. Their pursuit of fish, day after day, does more than bring the ocean’s bounty to our dinner table. In the face of changing times, these fishermen preserve Nantucket’s historic identity. Their tales can be exhilarating, even frightening, but they are every bit Nantucket.
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65-year-old lobsterman Chuck Butler is the archetypal old salt on Nantucket. How he ended up behind the helm of a lobster boat is a story as rich as the waters he has fished for the last 40 years. Butler grew up the son of a college professor, hundreds of miles from either coast in the Oklahoma panhandle. When his father welcomed a Native American to stay with them, Butler’s family of eight was driven by a strong anti-Indian contingent there out of Oklahoma, and they relocated to the Olympic Peninsula. Living in the lush rain forests of western Washington State, Butler became enamored with the surrounding waters. He spent his days tooling around Puget Sound trolling for salmon in a little “putt-putt”and, when the wind and weather cooperated, he sailed homemade skiffs.

Education drew Butler away from the water. After completing his undergraduate studies, he pursued a masters degree in physiological psychology at Northwestern University. His love for the water haunted his years in Chicago, and he obsessed over ocean racing. Butler found a way back to the sea by writing for a sailing magazine that had a branch in the Windy City. The publication sent him to all the major races in the southern Atlantic racing circuit. Consumed by the sailing culture, Butler soon landed a job delivering sailboats to islands all over the Atlantic. These were his formative years as a young mariner, running boats on an unforgiving open ocean, testing the limits of his skill and courage.

In the early 70’s, after years delivering boats, Butler came to Nantucket to dive on the ship wreck Andrea Doria. When his diving companions continued on to the Gulf of Mexico, Butler decided to stay. He harvested scallops using his diving gear, and worked odd jobs to get by. One such job was restoring a neglected lobster boat that had a habit of sinking every winter
Butler raised the Pamela D from the murky depths of the harbor, reconditioned it to shipshape and was encouraged to fish from it for fun. One fall, Pamela D’s owner gave him five lobster traps to try his hand.

“She told me there were a bunch of big four-foot Anderson half-rounds behind her house," he remembers. "She showed me how to rig ‘em and where the buoy lines were, so the next year I threw in some lobster traps and caught lobsters.”

Butler lobstered on the weekends, and gave away most of his catch to friends. Recognizing his uncanny knack for catching lobsters, Butler’s brother Michael recommended that he start selling his catch. And so it was that Chuck Butler, the "Nantucket Lobsterman," came to be.

Forty years and four custom-built boats later, at the age of 65, Butler still pulls pots four days a week, four months each year. If you’ve enjoyed a lobster dinner on Nantucket in the last four decades, there's a good chance it came off the decks of Butler’s 36-foot diesel trawler Merlin.

Few appreciate the utter danger faced by those engaged in the rugged profession of lobstering. When prompted, Butler quietly recounts his near-death experiences on the job. One such brush with death occurred on a chilly day in November.

While setting pots offshore with a greenhorn mate, Butler became ensnarled in the bight of the lines connecting the traps as they shot off the open transom of the boat. Ripped overboard, he plunged into the frigid Atlantic. Retelling the event, Butler’s casual composure falters just once. “The only thought that was in my brain for a long time was that my sister Sharon had died of ALS about two months before, and this was going to crush my mom.” Going under, his lungs seized up and he passed out. Death was imminent.

Miraculously, Butler came to and cut himself free from the web of lines. But his ordeal was not yet over. Though the air trapped in his lungs prevented him from sinking, he found himself pinned by the boat's hull below the surface. At the helm, the frantic young mate hastily jockeyed the boat, giving him "a couple little whacks" with the blender-like prop. Hearing the distinct thud of the boat being put in reverse, Butler knew another pass by the prop would “chop [him] to pieces.” He managed to push off the keel, away from the boat, and kick to the surface.

Climbing aboard, Butler found his mate in a state of shock. “He was in such a panic and so hysterical that I made him just calm down and relax," Butler remembers. “We hauled like another two trawls, even though I was like hypothermic, to get him out of his panic mode. Then we steamed in. That was one of the more exciting things to happen.”

Minutes after facing death and despite battling the onset of hypothermia, Butler hauled another forty traps for the sake of his rattled mate. Butler’s harrowing story compels a blunt but unavoidable question: "Why do it?" Why did this man with a distinguished education choose one of the most difficult and dangerous occupations on earth? Butler’s answer is simple, and genuine.
“I don’t care if I’m busting my tail on a grinder, I’m a lot happier on the water than when I’m not.”

Butler connects to the historic fraternity of Nantucket mariners who were seduced by life on the water. It is not the income the job provides that drives these fishermen, but the experience. “I’ve made it to 65 without ever having a job in my life”, Butler muses. “I just go for boat rides. And I still just get a gas being out there. You see tuna out there, and whales, and sea turtles. There are all kinds of gannets diving on things and buoys bouncing around the boat. You see all kinds of strange things out there.”

Butler has also seen the island evolve from a tight-knit fishing community to the bustling vacation destination it is today. Though the drive down to the dock may be a little more congested, life on the ocean hasn’t changed much, and neither has Butler’s love for being "out there." The old salt climbs aboard the Merlin each day with the same fervor as the young man who delivered boats on the high seas, with the same excitement as the boy who tooled around Puget Sound in his little boat, trolling for salmon.

2 comments:

  1. A great story on Chuck - thank you.
    Say hello to my former brother-in-law Chuck Butler for me. I remember the story on how he was pulled into the ocean and as he told it the value of keeping a knife on the ocean.
    I hope he is well and sometime I would love to visit the rock again.

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  2. I enjoy well told story that engages the imagination. A consumate wordsmith, Chuck Butler, my former brother in-law, had an engaging style, with a zest for life, adventures, poetic license and humor. RIP Chucky B. you were one of a kind, and will live on in tales of the sea.

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