Texas Shrimpers: Community, Capitalism, and the Sea PDF
Preview Texas Shrimpers: Community, Capitalism, and the Sea
Page i Texas Shrimpers Page ii Page iii Texas Shrimpers Community, Capitalism, and the Sea by Robert Lee Maril TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS College Station Page iv Copyright © 1983 by Robert Lee Maril All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Maril, Robert Lee. Texas shrimpers. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Shrimp industry — Texas. 2. Shrimpers (Persons) — Texas. I. Title. HD9472.S63U545 8245897 ISBN 0890961476 Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST EDITION Page v For Andrea Fisher Maril Page vii CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xxi Part One At Sea: Big Men in Little Boats 1. The Sea 3 2. The Work: Header and Rigger 9 3. The Work: Captain and CaptainOwner 32 4. Demographic Characteristics and Attitudes toward Work 53 Part Two Landfall: When Shrimpers Come Home 5. When the Frenchmen Came: A Social History of Shrimpers in Texas Ports 75 6. At the Dock: Drinking and Deviance 98 Part Three In the Marketplace: Shrimpers, Big Business, Big Government, and Unions 7. Economic Risks 127 8. The Structure of the Shrimping Industry: The Big Squeeze on the Owners 153 9. Big Government 172 10. Unions, Shrimpers, and the Shrimping Industry 186 Concluding Remarks 199 Bibliography 207 Index 219 Page viii Tables 21. Wages per Box Received by Headers, 1979 17 22. Riggers' Percentage of Boat's Share, 1979 31 31. Kinship Ties of Texas Shrimpers to Other Commercial Fishermen 42 32. Captains' Boat'sShare Agreements with Owners 50 33. Captains' Cuts with Riggers 50 41. Ethnicity of Texas Shrimpers 54 42. Gross Annual Fishing Income of Texas Shrimpers 56 43. QualityofLife Indicators for Shrimpers 57 44. Texas Shrimpers' Use of Government Subsidies 58 45. Shrimpers' Income by Job, 1979 58 46. Age by Crew Position 60 47. Education of Texas Shrimpers 60 48. Marital Status by Crew Position 61 49. Shrimpers' Attitudes toward Work 62 410. Shrimpers' Perceptions of Community Attitudes toward Shrimpers 66 411. Shrimpers' Concerns with the Effects of Their Work on Their Families 67 61. Drinking Patterns of Texas Shrimpers 109 71. Average Annual Costs and Returns for Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Vessels, 135 Fifty to Eighty Feet in Length, All Types of Construction, 197177 72. Annual Costs and Returns for a Typical Seventyfivefoot Gulf Shrimp 145 Vessel, 1980 73. Total U.S. Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Landings: Volume, Value, Average 149 Price, and Days Fished, 195677 74. U.S. Supply of All Forms of Shrimp, 197079 151 Page ix PREFACE This book is about Texas shrimpers. It is about their work, their families, their dreams, and their frustrations. It is also about their place in their communities and about how their communities respond to them. Finally, it is about shrimping as an industry and about how shrimpers are affected by big business, big government, and the larger economic forces, such as inflation, that affect us all. This book was written for everyone who, like me, has watched from a pier, a passing car, or a cozy dockside restaurant as shrimpers and their boats head for the Gulf sea, rigging framed against the sunset — and has wanted to go with them. It is written for those who wish they could see what shrimpers see, when far from sight of land, or work as they must work, if only for one day. It is directed, too, to anyone who has ever yearned to go on board a shrimp boat, sit and talk for a while about the weather or the fishing, and try to learn a little about these men who fish for a living. It is for those who wonder, too, what shrimpers do when they return with their catch — whether they lead their lives as other men do or whether the work at sea makes them somehow different from the rest of us. The shrimp industry is the most important fishing industry in the United States.1 Landings were valued in 1976 at $331.4 million, with production at 403.6 million pounds. While Texas was third in volume of landings among all states, it ranked first in value of shrimp landings, with $119.9 million. Texas is also a major importer of foreign shrimp. Yet it was not the money or the importance of the industry that first drew my attention. The boats, the shrimp trawlers, were what caught my fancy. I was a sophomore in college in Iowa. It was 1967. The winter had been very hard, as Iowa winters usually are, and some friends and I planned a trip during spring vacation to the sunny 1 See U.S. Department of Commerce, Data Management and Statistics Division, Fisheries of the United States, 1980. Page x beaches of Texas. The plan was to forget term papers and exams for a week and to get as sunburned as possible. We took a train from Des Moines to Oklahoma City, where I was born and raised. I remember staying up most of the night, then watching the sun come up over the spring stubble of the Kansas cornfields. We rented a car in Oklahoma City and drove the rest of the way to Galveston. When we got there, tired, pleasantly hot, a little dazed from the long trip, we all took a long walk along the beachfront, staring at the seafood restaurants, the gift and tourist shops, the cruising college student traffic, and the shrimp boats proudly docked in the harbor. The boats affected me as only images of life at sea could attract a landlubber locked into academic life among Iowa winters. They were at once foreign and majestic, their riggings forming an intriguing asymmetry, while at the same time mundane, putrid in their smells of diesel fumes and dead fish. I took photograph after photograph, later developing pictures filled with ropes, anchor chains, steel outriggers, winches, and bows with names like Conchita, Cajun Lady, and Sea Witch, all facing the foggy Galveston mornings. Some years later I pulled the photographs out of their envelope, again staring in fascination at their proud images. But if the boats were still haughty in their seedy dignity, they now appeared to me also entirely lifeless. I still had never met or even seen a shrimper. In 1975, when my wife and I moved to South Texas, I found myself drawn time and again to the jetties at South Padre Island. Using the subterfuge of fishing for trout and flounder, I would sit for hours watching the shrimp boats head down the ship channel and out the BrazosSantiago Cut to the Gulf of Mexico beyond. Perched on a piling no more than one hundred yards from the boats as they chugged slowly by, I would bait my hook with frozen shrimp, toss the line with heavy sinker over the jetty rocks, and hope that, for a while at least, no crabs or fish would disturb me. More often than not the whole fishing apparatus of hook, line, sinker, and shrimp would catch itself in a bottom crevice; then I would do some ritual pulling to appease my fellow fishermen and happily cut the whole lump free from my rod. But if it was the boats that had originally kindled my imagination, it was increasingly the shrimpers themselves to whom I was drawn. In part this was because, whenever I mentioned the word shrimper to
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