Ed Opheim Dories

The Kodiak Archipelago has a long, rich tradition of dory construction and use. This is a story of the rugged and capable dories built for the local fisheries by Ed Opheim.

The village of Ouzinkie is located on Spruce Island, approximately twelve miles north of Kodiak, Alaska.  In the early days of North American land appropriation, Ouzinkie became an outlying community for the Russian American Company, an official St Petersburg effort to expand settlement along the west coast of the North American continent. The Russians referred to the settlement in 1849 as "Uzenkiy," meaning "village of Russians and Creoles." In 1889, the Royal Packing Company constructed a cannery at Ouzinkie, which spurred the development of a modern fishery. This aerial photo is from 1960.

The earliest commercial fishing in Alaska was the salt cod industry. Hand-built dories used in this labor intensive effort were oar-powered until the 1920's, when small horsepower outboards were employed.
Ed Opheim, Sr. recalled that cod were so abundant around Unga, where he was born in 1910, that a red rag was all that was needed for bait.

Opheim had his own small lumber mill, processing the local spruce he used in dory construction. Hundreds of his boats were used in cod and salmon fisheries.
With his two sons, Ed Jr. and Norman, he built more than six hundred dories and skiffs from native spruce. For decades they were ubiquitous in the salmon gillnet fleet until aluminum and fiberglass skiffs replaced them in the 1980's - though his beautiful dories still ply Alaskan waters today.

Recently, I had a chance to look at an original 24-foot Opheim dory. Roy Parkinson owns this iconic piece of history and it has been fifteen years since he motored the boat to Port Townsend, WA, from SE Alaska. Roy fished this boat for several years in Alaska, everything from salmon to crab (the cod fishery has long since been decimated). His Opheim dory is outfitted with a 13hp Perkins diesel and once sported a sprit-rigged sail.

Building with solid timber has the advantage that all the parts can be replaced as needed, so as you might expect, Doryman is considering making Roy an offer on this fine old vessel. Despite years of neglect, it's sturdy carvel-planked hull is still tough, though the plank on frame bottom appears to be in sad shape. As I ran my hand along the still substantial shear-guard, years of plying the challenging waters of Alaska came to mind. This old dory as more life left in her, no doubt of that.

In his later years, Ed Opheim moved to Kodiak,
took up writing, and his books are now celebrated local lore. (Ed lived to be 100 years old.)
He wrote "The Memoirs and Saga of a Cod Fisherman's Son: Ten years of dory-fishing cod (1923-1933) at Sunny Cove, Spruce Island, Alaska", which is sadly out of print and as far as I can tell, no longer available.
If anyone knows of a copy, I'd love to hear of it.

Old photos of Ouzinkie courtesy of Timothy Smith.
Thanks to Marty Loken, boat restorer extraordinaire, for bringing this old work boat to my attention.

Lunenburg Dory

The Banks dory was ubiquitous up and down the eastern seaboard of North America at one time, so much that it's origins on this continent are debatable today. There is one place however that stands alone as a stalwart of the old dory building traditions and that is the Dory Shop in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

The Lunenburg dory has been built in the same shop since 1917 and is still built the same way today as it was ninety years ago, with defining features such as one piece grown knees, breasthooks and braces.






While hundreds of dories have come from this shop, it's rare to see one on the west coast of the US. But it turns out there has been one nearly in my backyard for some time, resting on a couple old tires out in the bushes, waiting for someone to save it.

That person is my good friend Jim Ballou.

Jim loves these old dories and the history they represent. He's a diligent restorer with a keen eye for tradition. He acquired his new prize just three months ago, at the Depoe Bay Boat Show and it's already back in the water, looking like new. You can see from the photos, the boat was in pretty sad shape before.

This boat was built by W. Lawrence Allen, who owned the shop in Lunenburg from 1949 and 1972 when it was called Dory Builders Ltd. Somehow it ended up 3000 miles away, abandoned in the little town of Seal Rock, just a few miles south of here. Jim followed up on a sales listing for an old dory and when he discovered it was from Nova Scotia, he was hooked.

He has outfitted his new boat with two new pair of oars and thole pins from the Dory Shop. The boat has been painted dory buff, with the brightwork done in oil. Good as new and ready to go fishing!

Congratulations Jim, on your new dory. I hope to take a turn on those beautiful oars soon!

Portugese Cod Fishing with Banks Dories

More film of Portuguese and Basque cod fishermen.

These old shots just amaze me. Look at the seas these fellows braved every day, in small boats that most people today would consider dangerously diminutive.






Thank you, Caxinas a freguesia!