MARY JACOBS fished Kodiak, Prince William Sound, and Togiak between 1971 and 2005. She was skipper of the Invader in 1979, later skippered three seiners each of which was named Renaissance. She started out with an all-woman crew. After getting a larger boat with a head, she became an equal-opportunity employer but generally preferred fishing with women.
She's retired to an ocean-side property near the mouth of the Rogue River in southern Oregon where her old seine keeps her chickens corralled and deer away from her strawberries.
She is nearing completion of a memoir of fishing and raising a family in the 70s and 80s.
She's retired to an ocean-side property near the mouth of the Rogue River in southern Oregon where her old seine keeps her chickens corralled and deer away from her strawberries.
She is nearing completion of a memoir of fishing and raising a family in the 70s and 80s.
W R I T I N G S
Dirty Mary
Reflections on arriving, quitting, and moving on
Dirty Mary. One of my nicknames on Kodiak Island was Dirty Mary. I hated it. Still do. It made me feel like a harbor skank even though the way I acquired it was honest. As a single mom raising my daughter while trying to keep a small salmon boat afloat somehow I turned up at too many events wearing coveralls and grease instead of a modest frock and light make-up. Dirty Mary. It was a name invented by fishermen who felt the need to slander me when I doubled their catches.
Most fishermen have partners, brothers, or cousins on the grounds. At first, I’d been a loner. It had been clear to me that if I asked for help, I would be dismissed as dependent. I found my favorite places to fish. I designed my net and rehung it every year with my all-women crew. Fearful of breakdowns, every spring I had mechanics check my boat’s diesel engine and outboard. While fishing, I frequently set my net before dawn. My determination and tenacity were rewarded with highline seasons.
Since breaking up with my first husband, I had little social life as I tried to make up to my daughter for the months away at sea. When my friend and future husband, Tom suggested that we join a square dance club, it seemed harmless. Always chunky, when Tom swung me with his powerful arms, I felt almost dainty. I was seduced by his southern charm and loyalty. “They better never call you Dirty Mary again,” he said as his massive clenched fist punched his opposing palm.
For the next three years we fished side by side. He taught me about fishing herring and pink salmon; I led the way to the sockeye and halibut grounds.
We got married in 1986 and worked together building a house twice the size of any place either of us had ever lived. After years of camping on small boats, the ceilings had to be cathedral, the rooms spacious. Salmon and herring were at historically high prices and we both did well. Every time I hauled in my gear, I calculated the fish dollars for each door, window, or toilet. For the first time, I was setting goals beyond fishing.
There had been a period of adjustment with Tom. The first year the Rebel and Renaissance fished and traveled together, I followed my instincts and turned north at Outlet Cape. A few minutes later Tom called on the VHF. “Where ya’ going?” he asked. I knew he planned to turn south. My back straightened and I gripped the microphone. I’m not going to announce my destination on the radio, I thought. Then I realized that my responsibility to the partnership was honesty. I also realized that no one since my mother cared for me like Tom did.
“I’m going to look around Afognak.” I said.
“You just can’t disappear on me,” he drawled. “I want to know where you’re at.”
I guess my days of being independent are over, I thought with mixed feelings. I told him what bay I was heading for. “I’ll call you after the opening and tell you in code what I get. Okay?”
“Talk at you later,” he said. “Love ya.”
I winced and felt my ears burning. Oh my God! He just said he loved me so the whole fleet can hear! I cleared my throat and signed off with a stammering “Love you too.”
I passed a scow and I thought how like Tom it was, solid, dependable, older, a wood boat with massive ribs and planks. Scows always have a cup of coffee brewing in the galley and biscuits and leftover bacon on the oil stove. Could I, the pushy little tugboat, harbor alongside the scow? I was used to brief tie-ups with other boats and moving on alone to other places and jobs. Tom was comfortable. I wondered why it was so difficult for me to relax into this new give and take. Why did I feel like it was a sign of weakness? I felt that I should be able to maintain my independence. Isn’t a sign of maturity to make compromises for the sake of the relationship?
A few years later, in 1988, I tried to quit fishing. At that point, I felt that I had been accepted by other fishermen as something beyond the Dirty Mary moniker. I’d proved that an independent woman could hold her own fishing amongst men. I was almost 40, married to Tom Dooley, pregnant, and living in our dream house. If I sold my boat, I could be a full-time mother to our new baby and my pre-teen daughter. I felt that I faced a choice between motherhood and fishing. Could I admit that I had achieved success and move on to a comfortable home life?
It had been a tough year. There were tons of fish but, pregnant and exhausted, I struggled. One of my crew could barely grip the net with her carpel tunnel-swollen hands. The other deckhand never complained but I could see she was worn out trying to take up the slack. An electrical fire shorted out circuits, most importantly, the starter. So I kept the boat running day and night for the last few weeks of the season. We were making $15,000 to $20,000 a day. I couldn’t bear to give up that kind of money to go to town to fix things properly.
When September approached and fishing slowed, I limped into town dreading the month I’d have to devote to repairs. I was ready to nest. That night, without discussing it with Tom or my crew, I decided to sell my boat. I felt comfortable with the decision but was afraid to speak it out loud because as long as it remained in my head alone, I could change my mind.
In the morning I tied to the harbormaster dock. The crew was stacking the net on a trailer while I ran the hydraulics on the boat. Scott Gulliland poked his head over the dock. “How’d you do?” I asked.
“Not good enough.” He hung his head in shame. “Going to Bible school.”
“Too bad.” Scott had been doing great in June. So good, he felt pretty sure that he could catch, with his little wooden Nyaid, nearly as much as his big brother with his 50 foot fiberglass seiner. They had made a wager. If Scott caught half as much fish as Dytan, his older brother was going to give him his boat. If not, Scott had to spend the following winter studying the Bible.
“What are you going to do?” Scott asked, squinting into the fall sun. I stopped the hydraulics and told the crew to take a break.
“I’m selling. 150.”
“Will you hold it for me with a check for 5%?”
“Don’t you want to look at the boat? It’s got some wiring issues.”
“It’s the boat I want.” He climbed down the ladder and handed me a check for $7500.
I gripped the check with sweating hands. I kept telling myself, it’s what you wanted. A couple of days of cleaning the boat and getting my things off and I could take walks in the woods, pick berries, eat healthy food, not have to deliver fish at midnight and set the alarm for three AM. I could be a proper wife and mother. I’d be able to see other parts of Alaska in the summer and maybe even get to one of the cousin’s reunions in Maine.
At the print shop later that day, I copied the sales agreement and chatted with the clerk.
“No! You can’t quit fishing,” she exclaimed. “You’ve been my inspiration.”
Before that, I hadn’t realized that I was viewed from a distance in a positive light. I thought people just saw me as Dirty Mary, in my grimy coveralls buying parts at daybreak or going to teacher conferences with grease-stained hands.
I’d listened to derogatory radio talk about my looks and my skill. It all hurt but I kept upright no matter how rough the passage. While fishing, I was like a kayaker caught up in current, watching for downstream obstacles.
After selling my boat, I began to stand on the shore and watch others navigate the rapids. In town, I encountered admirers who echoed the print-shop clerk. Even Gerry Gugel, highline God-squad fisherman said he’d let one of his five daughters fish with me, the agnostic Jew.
The next spring I stood on the dock and watched The Rebel take ice, untie, and head for the grounds, his Confederate flag flying high. I worried about him; the boat had little freeboard. At the end of the 48 hour opening, the wind came up. Tom’s evening transmission on the ship-to-shore radio was brief. The Rebel had a full tank of water and about 20,000 pounds of halibut. He sounded tired. “The deck’s awash, we’re okay, for now.”
An hour later he was calling the Coast Guard. I heard him explain his situation. “Water is coming into the engine room faster than I can pump it out.”
I knew how dangerous it was to empty a tank in a swell. A slack tank is what rolled boats. I also knew that Tom was good in a crises. When the Coast Guard called to update Tom’s progress every ten minutes and he didn’t answer, I gripped the radio mike with clammy hands. I wanted to call but knew I had to keep from interfering. He’s probably not responding because he’s in the engine room, I thought. A minute later, I heard Tom’s Alabama drawl, “Yes sir, we need another pump.”
Every moment between transmissions were terrifying. Each radio silence paralyzed me. I felt so helpless. It was worse than me being in trouble at sea where I would have been busy dealing with problems. If I was still fishing I could run alongside him and make sure he was safe. All I could do was listen to the crackling radio and wind whistling through the spruce trees, shake with chills, and hang on to our daughter. I was too distant to hear transmissions when the helicopter arrived with a pump and they switched to a VHF frequency to coordinate dropping it.
Sometime in the early morning hours, The Rebel made it inside Cape Chiniak and Tom was able to pump out his tank. After that, I was able to sleep.
The next summer I stayed home, waited for Tom’s calls and wondered if I could find satisfaction in the role of supportive wife. Every day when I answered the radio, he gave me a list of parts and groceries to buy and deliver to the cannery. I felt like I was still doing the drudgery of preparing to fish without ever being able to leave shopping, lists, distractions, and chaos in my wake. I was more than without a boat; I seemed dependent and rudderless.
I thought back to when I first came to Alaska and wanted to go to sea and escape the noisy bustling, partying towns. I was acutely aware that the real Alaska was outside of the smelly canneries. I wanted to go where the guys were going--to remote bays, where I could have the experiences they talked about in bars. I wanted to catch a boatload of salmon while watching seabirds, whales, dolphins, bears, and foxes. I desperately wanted to take walks on isolated beaches. I wanted to sit on deck in my raingear slurping fresh-cooked, butter-soaked crab.
At the post office, the letters from Karen Ducey, Maria Finn, Moe, and other potential crew arrived almost daily. My fifteen year old daughter went fishing with Tom but wished she could go with me as she started to think about saving for college. I couldn’t separate my feelings. Did I want to go back fishing for everyone else or for myself?
In the fall, I left two-year-old Imy with a babysitter and went on a four day halibut trip with Tom and his crew. It was a nice change, working on the back deck with the guys. I baited hooks and cleaned fish. The crew and I tossed fish guts to squawking seagulls, gangly albatross, and surface-skimming fulmars. I can do this-be a crewman again, I thought. Until we returned to town.
At the end of the trip we tied up at the cannery and Tom left to run errands. “Don’t take the hatch off ‘til I get back,” were his definitive orders. Before Tom returned, the raingear-clad unloading crew threw cargo nets onto our deck and climbed aboard. We waited to open the hold while cannery workers sat on the Rebel’s deck smoking and not minding a break. I steamed at the inefficiency. Tom’s crew had fished with him for years. They knew how to hook the hatch-cover with a line from the boom and pull it off, as did I. The Rebel’s crew seemed unfazed as they chatted with the unloading crew. My style of skippering was to believe in my crew’s ability and let them be autonomous. I was personally affronted that Tom did not have confidence in me. A few minutes later, Tom arrived and lifted the cover, unloading ensued. I sulked.
In the fall, the owner of Ledford Marine called and said he had no boat orders and wanted to keep his crew working building a wider version of the Rebel. Tom turned to me. “It’s an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up,” he said. “We can take Imy with us or you can lease the boat and I’ll keep an eye on it.”
I thought long about it. A new boat, my dream boat… refrigerated seawater so I wouldn’t have to deliver every night, an enclosed top house so I wouldn’t have to freeze, soak, or fry all day on an open bridge. At night I could sleep in privacy. I’d have state-of-the-art electronics. I’d have a hot water tank and a spacious shower. We’d be comfortable and safe. My older daughter had survived on a tiny boat with nonexistent rails, but with a new Ledford, Imy would have room to play. It’d be wider so there would be additional displacement. I started to calculate fish hold capacity. If I baffle the sides of the hold so the cubic capacity is equal to that of the Rebel, I should gain 8 inches of freeboard. At that moment, I forgot all the things I hated about fishing. I wanted more challenge in my life. It’d be easy, I deluded myself. I’d be a shiny yacht with a spotless engine room sliding effortlessly through the water. I wondered if, with a new boat, I could at last bury the name Dirty Mary at sea.
Reflections on arriving, quitting, and moving on
Dirty Mary. One of my nicknames on Kodiak Island was Dirty Mary. I hated it. Still do. It made me feel like a harbor skank even though the way I acquired it was honest. As a single mom raising my daughter while trying to keep a small salmon boat afloat somehow I turned up at too many events wearing coveralls and grease instead of a modest frock and light make-up. Dirty Mary. It was a name invented by fishermen who felt the need to slander me when I doubled their catches.
Most fishermen have partners, brothers, or cousins on the grounds. At first, I’d been a loner. It had been clear to me that if I asked for help, I would be dismissed as dependent. I found my favorite places to fish. I designed my net and rehung it every year with my all-women crew. Fearful of breakdowns, every spring I had mechanics check my boat’s diesel engine and outboard. While fishing, I frequently set my net before dawn. My determination and tenacity were rewarded with highline seasons.
Since breaking up with my first husband, I had little social life as I tried to make up to my daughter for the months away at sea. When my friend and future husband, Tom suggested that we join a square dance club, it seemed harmless. Always chunky, when Tom swung me with his powerful arms, I felt almost dainty. I was seduced by his southern charm and loyalty. “They better never call you Dirty Mary again,” he said as his massive clenched fist punched his opposing palm.
For the next three years we fished side by side. He taught me about fishing herring and pink salmon; I led the way to the sockeye and halibut grounds.
We got married in 1986 and worked together building a house twice the size of any place either of us had ever lived. After years of camping on small boats, the ceilings had to be cathedral, the rooms spacious. Salmon and herring were at historically high prices and we both did well. Every time I hauled in my gear, I calculated the fish dollars for each door, window, or toilet. For the first time, I was setting goals beyond fishing.
There had been a period of adjustment with Tom. The first year the Rebel and Renaissance fished and traveled together, I followed my instincts and turned north at Outlet Cape. A few minutes later Tom called on the VHF. “Where ya’ going?” he asked. I knew he planned to turn south. My back straightened and I gripped the microphone. I’m not going to announce my destination on the radio, I thought. Then I realized that my responsibility to the partnership was honesty. I also realized that no one since my mother cared for me like Tom did.
“I’m going to look around Afognak.” I said.
“You just can’t disappear on me,” he drawled. “I want to know where you’re at.”
I guess my days of being independent are over, I thought with mixed feelings. I told him what bay I was heading for. “I’ll call you after the opening and tell you in code what I get. Okay?”
“Talk at you later,” he said. “Love ya.”
I winced and felt my ears burning. Oh my God! He just said he loved me so the whole fleet can hear! I cleared my throat and signed off with a stammering “Love you too.”
I passed a scow and I thought how like Tom it was, solid, dependable, older, a wood boat with massive ribs and planks. Scows always have a cup of coffee brewing in the galley and biscuits and leftover bacon on the oil stove. Could I, the pushy little tugboat, harbor alongside the scow? I was used to brief tie-ups with other boats and moving on alone to other places and jobs. Tom was comfortable. I wondered why it was so difficult for me to relax into this new give and take. Why did I feel like it was a sign of weakness? I felt that I should be able to maintain my independence. Isn’t a sign of maturity to make compromises for the sake of the relationship?
A few years later, in 1988, I tried to quit fishing. At that point, I felt that I had been accepted by other fishermen as something beyond the Dirty Mary moniker. I’d proved that an independent woman could hold her own fishing amongst men. I was almost 40, married to Tom Dooley, pregnant, and living in our dream house. If I sold my boat, I could be a full-time mother to our new baby and my pre-teen daughter. I felt that I faced a choice between motherhood and fishing. Could I admit that I had achieved success and move on to a comfortable home life?
It had been a tough year. There were tons of fish but, pregnant and exhausted, I struggled. One of my crew could barely grip the net with her carpel tunnel-swollen hands. The other deckhand never complained but I could see she was worn out trying to take up the slack. An electrical fire shorted out circuits, most importantly, the starter. So I kept the boat running day and night for the last few weeks of the season. We were making $15,000 to $20,000 a day. I couldn’t bear to give up that kind of money to go to town to fix things properly.
When September approached and fishing slowed, I limped into town dreading the month I’d have to devote to repairs. I was ready to nest. That night, without discussing it with Tom or my crew, I decided to sell my boat. I felt comfortable with the decision but was afraid to speak it out loud because as long as it remained in my head alone, I could change my mind.
In the morning I tied to the harbormaster dock. The crew was stacking the net on a trailer while I ran the hydraulics on the boat. Scott Gulliland poked his head over the dock. “How’d you do?” I asked.
“Not good enough.” He hung his head in shame. “Going to Bible school.”
“Too bad.” Scott had been doing great in June. So good, he felt pretty sure that he could catch, with his little wooden Nyaid, nearly as much as his big brother with his 50 foot fiberglass seiner. They had made a wager. If Scott caught half as much fish as Dytan, his older brother was going to give him his boat. If not, Scott had to spend the following winter studying the Bible.
“What are you going to do?” Scott asked, squinting into the fall sun. I stopped the hydraulics and told the crew to take a break.
“I’m selling. 150.”
“Will you hold it for me with a check for 5%?”
“Don’t you want to look at the boat? It’s got some wiring issues.”
“It’s the boat I want.” He climbed down the ladder and handed me a check for $7500.
I gripped the check with sweating hands. I kept telling myself, it’s what you wanted. A couple of days of cleaning the boat and getting my things off and I could take walks in the woods, pick berries, eat healthy food, not have to deliver fish at midnight and set the alarm for three AM. I could be a proper wife and mother. I’d be able to see other parts of Alaska in the summer and maybe even get to one of the cousin’s reunions in Maine.
At the print shop later that day, I copied the sales agreement and chatted with the clerk.
“No! You can’t quit fishing,” she exclaimed. “You’ve been my inspiration.”
Before that, I hadn’t realized that I was viewed from a distance in a positive light. I thought people just saw me as Dirty Mary, in my grimy coveralls buying parts at daybreak or going to teacher conferences with grease-stained hands.
I’d listened to derogatory radio talk about my looks and my skill. It all hurt but I kept upright no matter how rough the passage. While fishing, I was like a kayaker caught up in current, watching for downstream obstacles.
After selling my boat, I began to stand on the shore and watch others navigate the rapids. In town, I encountered admirers who echoed the print-shop clerk. Even Gerry Gugel, highline God-squad fisherman said he’d let one of his five daughters fish with me, the agnostic Jew.
The next spring I stood on the dock and watched The Rebel take ice, untie, and head for the grounds, his Confederate flag flying high. I worried about him; the boat had little freeboard. At the end of the 48 hour opening, the wind came up. Tom’s evening transmission on the ship-to-shore radio was brief. The Rebel had a full tank of water and about 20,000 pounds of halibut. He sounded tired. “The deck’s awash, we’re okay, for now.”
An hour later he was calling the Coast Guard. I heard him explain his situation. “Water is coming into the engine room faster than I can pump it out.”
I knew how dangerous it was to empty a tank in a swell. A slack tank is what rolled boats. I also knew that Tom was good in a crises. When the Coast Guard called to update Tom’s progress every ten minutes and he didn’t answer, I gripped the radio mike with clammy hands. I wanted to call but knew I had to keep from interfering. He’s probably not responding because he’s in the engine room, I thought. A minute later, I heard Tom’s Alabama drawl, “Yes sir, we need another pump.”
Every moment between transmissions were terrifying. Each radio silence paralyzed me. I felt so helpless. It was worse than me being in trouble at sea where I would have been busy dealing with problems. If I was still fishing I could run alongside him and make sure he was safe. All I could do was listen to the crackling radio and wind whistling through the spruce trees, shake with chills, and hang on to our daughter. I was too distant to hear transmissions when the helicopter arrived with a pump and they switched to a VHF frequency to coordinate dropping it.
Sometime in the early morning hours, The Rebel made it inside Cape Chiniak and Tom was able to pump out his tank. After that, I was able to sleep.
The next summer I stayed home, waited for Tom’s calls and wondered if I could find satisfaction in the role of supportive wife. Every day when I answered the radio, he gave me a list of parts and groceries to buy and deliver to the cannery. I felt like I was still doing the drudgery of preparing to fish without ever being able to leave shopping, lists, distractions, and chaos in my wake. I was more than without a boat; I seemed dependent and rudderless.
I thought back to when I first came to Alaska and wanted to go to sea and escape the noisy bustling, partying towns. I was acutely aware that the real Alaska was outside of the smelly canneries. I wanted to go where the guys were going--to remote bays, where I could have the experiences they talked about in bars. I wanted to catch a boatload of salmon while watching seabirds, whales, dolphins, bears, and foxes. I desperately wanted to take walks on isolated beaches. I wanted to sit on deck in my raingear slurping fresh-cooked, butter-soaked crab.
At the post office, the letters from Karen Ducey, Maria Finn, Moe, and other potential crew arrived almost daily. My fifteen year old daughter went fishing with Tom but wished she could go with me as she started to think about saving for college. I couldn’t separate my feelings. Did I want to go back fishing for everyone else or for myself?
In the fall, I left two-year-old Imy with a babysitter and went on a four day halibut trip with Tom and his crew. It was a nice change, working on the back deck with the guys. I baited hooks and cleaned fish. The crew and I tossed fish guts to squawking seagulls, gangly albatross, and surface-skimming fulmars. I can do this-be a crewman again, I thought. Until we returned to town.
At the end of the trip we tied up at the cannery and Tom left to run errands. “Don’t take the hatch off ‘til I get back,” were his definitive orders. Before Tom returned, the raingear-clad unloading crew threw cargo nets onto our deck and climbed aboard. We waited to open the hold while cannery workers sat on the Rebel’s deck smoking and not minding a break. I steamed at the inefficiency. Tom’s crew had fished with him for years. They knew how to hook the hatch-cover with a line from the boom and pull it off, as did I. The Rebel’s crew seemed unfazed as they chatted with the unloading crew. My style of skippering was to believe in my crew’s ability and let them be autonomous. I was personally affronted that Tom did not have confidence in me. A few minutes later, Tom arrived and lifted the cover, unloading ensued. I sulked.
In the fall, the owner of Ledford Marine called and said he had no boat orders and wanted to keep his crew working building a wider version of the Rebel. Tom turned to me. “It’s an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up,” he said. “We can take Imy with us or you can lease the boat and I’ll keep an eye on it.”
I thought long about it. A new boat, my dream boat… refrigerated seawater so I wouldn’t have to deliver every night, an enclosed top house so I wouldn’t have to freeze, soak, or fry all day on an open bridge. At night I could sleep in privacy. I’d have state-of-the-art electronics. I’d have a hot water tank and a spacious shower. We’d be comfortable and safe. My older daughter had survived on a tiny boat with nonexistent rails, but with a new Ledford, Imy would have room to play. It’d be wider so there would be additional displacement. I started to calculate fish hold capacity. If I baffle the sides of the hold so the cubic capacity is equal to that of the Rebel, I should gain 8 inches of freeboard. At that moment, I forgot all the things I hated about fishing. I wanted more challenge in my life. It’d be easy, I deluded myself. I’d be a shiny yacht with a spotless engine room sliding effortlessly through the water. I wondered if, with a new boat, I could at last bury the name Dirty Mary at sea.