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Our Grandfather Captain Joe and His Crew Aboard The F/V Benjamin C Landed 198,500lbs of Redfish March 2, 1948

Gloucester’s realest no-bullshit historian Ron Gilson provided the newspaper clipping.

Captain Joe was 33 years old and lived at 7 Washington Sq.

This is without the electronics that modern fishing boats use today.

Crew members shared up $733 each. Adjusted for inflation that’s $7800 each.

Incredible.

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1947 Viking Pump Publication Featuring Our Grandfather Captain Joe Ciaramitaro and His Boat The Benjamin C

Joey,

My name is Chad Wunderlich and I work for Viking Pump, a manufacturer of pumps in Northeast Iowa.  I’ve been going over some old publications we sent out to the field over the years and came across the attached article regarding the Benjamin C from our winter 1947 publication.  A Google search landed me on your site and I thought you might be interested in having a copy of the article (attached).

 It was interesting to me to read the Atlantic Fisherman article posted on the site which mentions, among other things, the Viking bilge pump as well.

Regards,

Chad Wunderlich

captainjoevikingpump1

 

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Lobster trap tag washed up in Cornwall, UK that was attached to a trap in Gloucester MA harbor that belonged to our lobsterman Tommy Burns, skipper of the F/V Arethusa

Good Morning Gloucester

Hello from England!

We found this lobster trap tag washed up in Cornwall, UK a few days ago and wondered whether it might have once belonged to lobsterman Tom Burns of the boat Arethusa? Not sure if it’s the same person or not but it would be wonderful to find out!
With very best wishes from Tracey Williams in Newquay, Cornwall

I put it into a google map and did a distance calculation- 3052 miles!

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Old Packing Slips Discovered- Sea View Lobster Co. Gloucester Mass. Telephone (Gloucester, Mass.) 1324

Bradley Scheetz who bought a house on East Main Street a couple of years ago found stacks of these lobster packing slips hidden in the attic.  I’d never heard of the Sea View Lobster Company and I’m not sure when we used four digit telephone numbers here in Gloucester.

I’m curious if anyone knows who owned Sea View Lobster Co and where it was located.  Please share

Thanks Bradley for sharing this with us.

Maybe Pat Dalpiaz can figure this out.
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We Added A “New” Old Fairbanks Cart To The Captain Joe’s Family

At the dock there are a couple of key pieces of equipment.  The winch, the forktruck, the scales and the carts.  Any one of these go down and we’re in serious trouble.  We rely on them to work day in and day out.  In the worst of all conditions.

You know how the fishing industry is the second most dangerous profession in the world behind coal mining?  Well it might be the second most dangerous profession but handling saltwater fish is absolutely the deadliest profession for machinery.  Salt, and saltwater, fish grease and massive tonnage being handled daily create the perfect storm of corrosiveness and opportunity for mechanical failure.

That’s why whenever I have an opportunity to secure a Fairbanks Cart to help perform our job at the dock I leap.  This morning at 5:00 AM I drove a couple of hours to get my hands on the newest member of the Captain Joe and Sons Lobster Company Family.  One of the best parts about the Fairbanks carts are the plug in caster systems.  If after years you need new casters, you contact the company and they can ship you out new ones.

The decks are absolute beastly and handle incredibly poundings without skipping a beat.  I routinely lower 400Lbs of lobster crates on them when offloading the boats and then add another stack of 400.  No problem.

Here’s the new one.  I put a couple of coats of linseed oil on the oak decking and greased up the greased fittings and she’s ready for servicing our lobster fleet!

Our “Old” Fairbanks cart that’s helped offload millions of pounds of lobsters through the decades and our newly acquired Fairbanks Cart with the pretty green paint.

Isn’t she pretty?

http://www.fairbankscasters.com/
from the website:

For more than 125 years, the Fairbanks Company has been shipping quality material handling equipment from our manufacturing facilities in Rome, GA. Our facilities encompass more than 200,000 square feet of production and warehousing space. To maintain our leadership role in the industry, we have modernized our facilities with the latest in robotic welding, electrostatic powder coating and CNC machining of wood parts.

These techniques have resulted in the expansion of our product offerings, making us a premier supplier of casters, wheel, handtrucks, platform trucks and dollies.

 

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Rare Orange #Lobster Caught By Mike Tufts Aboard The Mighty F/V Degelyse

Good Morning Gloucester

Our lobsterman Mike Tufts catches a rare orange#lobster. If we didn’t shoot the video to show it moving and alive you’d think it was cooked. He returned it to the sea once he let us shoot the video.

Click here to see pages and pages of other mutated lobsters we’ve documented at Captain Joe and Sons Lobster Company 

#mutantlobster #GloucesterMA#lobstercompany #beautifulindustry

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