2 minute read
by Frederick Smith
by Frederick Smith
23
IN JULY OF 1933 Herbert Hoover's last military budget took effect, and many junior officers were transferred to inactive duty status, even though the "scoop" we were getting from the China Station about Japanese plans was disturbing.
I left Marine Squadron VF-9M and went home to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where I found work flying for the Consolidated Lobster Company, whose collection and distribution plant was situated in a rock-bound cove at Bay View on the Northwest shore of Cape Ann. The company bought a 330 horsepower Loening Amphibian on my recommendation, — an airplane that was no beauty, but was sturdy, and seaand-airworthy — which was used to manage a fleet of 75-foot trawlertype boats operating in the Gulf of Maine, the Bay of Fundy, and offshore Nova Scotian waters. Their hulls had "wet bottoms," i.e., their cargo-holds were open to the sea by means of holes bored through their bilges to keep their live-lobster cargoes fresh, following purchase and stowage from local fishermen.
My pay was forty dollars per week, plus away-from-base expenses, and the job was great fun. I loved flying, sailing, swimming; - anything that had to do with ocean and, — best of all — I could remain solvent if careful.
One morning in August, Raymond O'Connell, my boss, asked if I'd ever been to Nantucket. I said "No," but that I'd flown over it many times on military flights. "Fine," he said, "because I want you to take Clarence Birdseye down there tomorrow."
Next morning we were off, leaving from Pavilion Beach in front of my father's inn, "the Gloucester Tavern," and were over Nantucket Harbor around noon on a beautiful day. We were to have lunch with Bassett Jones and his family, so we found Pocomo on the harbor chart, circled it twice (the Jones were waving to us from their yard) made a landing approach over Polpis, and touched-down off the west shore into a gentle northwest wind. (During subsequent years as a resident and sailboatman on the island I never see the big rock on Pocomo's west shore without remembering that first visit.)
Lunch and the company was delightful; afterward the family loaned me a car, and I explored Nantucket and loved it; — about twentyfive years and a million miles later I became a permanent resident.
Clarence Birdseye was great company, — a friendly, competent man with broad interests, and as we taxied off the Pocomo shingle and became water-borne prior to take-off, he told me that Bassett Jones had been of great personal and professional assistance in the early development of the Birdseye Process.
