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Documenting Maritime Folklife: An Introductory Guide
Part 1: What to Document
Introduction
In order to provide the reader with a sense of the form and variety of
traditions found in maritime communities, this section provides a few typical
examples
from the huge body of traditional expressions found in North American maritime
communities. While this manner of presentation places traditional behavior
into categories or genres, it is important to bear in mind that traditional
activities do not exist in isolated, neatly defined chunks in everyday
life. Traditional behavior always takes place within live cultural settings
that
create it and make it understandable. In other words, the categorizable
item--the joke, the belief about luck, the boat--can only be fully understood
within
its natural context. And within such natural contexts several traditional
expressions may be enacted at the same time. Consider, for example, a commercial
fisherman piloting this locally built boat to fishing grounds by lining
up "marks" (landmarks)
while, at the same time, interpreting the circular flight patterns of sea
gulls as a sign of an impending storm. In this case, traditional knowledge
about boat forms suited to local conditions, navigation by eye, and prediction
of weather are integrated.
Traditional
knowledge can be expressed in all sorts of settings, but the ones
to which folklorists and other cultural specialists devote particular
attention are groupings of people based on ethnic, regional, occupational,
and family ties. In maritime communities, one rich context for
traditional expressions is the occupational group. Commercial fishermen,
fish plant workers, boat builders, net makers, harbor pilots, and
deep-sea fishing boat captains all acquire an amazing variety of
traditional knowledge from co-workers which they pass along to
others within the workplace.
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At the core of any occupation is the technique required to perform
a given task.1 This technique
consists of the ways workers use their tools, respond to their
environment, and interact with other workers. For example, the
central technique of oyster-shucking consists of four operations:
breaking off the tip of the oyster, inserting a knife blade in
the shell, cutting the muscle from the top and bottom of the shell,
and depositing the meat into a bucket. To outsiders this may sound
like a fairly simple operation, but insiders know that skillful
execution of the sequence of movements takes years of practice.
Virginia Duggar of Apalachicola, Florida, an oyster shucker with
over twenty years of experience, explains her basic shucking operations:
You used to use a hammer and an iron block with a tip-
thing on it. And you hold the oyster behind the block with the
lip of the oyster on this raised-up piece and you hit across that
thin part of the oyster with the hammer. We have shucking hammers
which are flat on both sides. And the main thing is to keep the
point of your knife up towards the top shell. Now, you have a top
and a bottom to an oyster. Ninety percent of the time the top of
the oyster will be flatter, and bottom of the oyster will be rounder.
So, you keep your knife, the point of your knife, and you bring
it across that top shell. And then you put the top shell off, and
then you come under and you cut off the bottom of the eye of the
bottom shell. But if you're not particular to keep that knife kind
of pushed up against the top of that top shell, then you'll cut
your oyster. Your knife will go right through the belly part of
it.2.
Surrounding the central technique of an occupation are many related
expressive forms: words and gestures used between workers, the
arrangement of tools and other objects within the work area, and
customs practiced there. In the oyster house, the shuckers select
oyster knives with the most appropriate blades for certain shell
shapes; distinguish oysters of varying size, shape, color, and
shell composition; tell stories about events that have occurred
in the oyster house; gesture to the "houseman" to bring more oysters;
and, perhaps, organize a party for another shucker who is about
to be married.3 Examined
altogether, these traditional activities help reveal how the group
of shuckers expresses itself and its values.4
Frequently, certain kinds of traditional knowledge is shared
only by the members of a particular occupation: the names and locations
of shrimp fishing grounds are often known only by the shrimp fishermen
within a specific area. Other kinds of knowledge, such as environmental
clues used to predict the weather, might be known by persons in
several occupations or by the community at large. A prominent example
of traditional knowledge used by boat operators from different
occupational groups relates to navigation. Although state-of-the-art
electronic navigation devices are available to contemporary commercial
fishermen and other boat operators, many who operate close to shore
still calculate a straight-line course using a time-honored system
based on lining up two landmarks. For example, a fisherman might
plot his course to a prime fishing spot by aligning a familiar
tree with the steeple of the local church. A line, or "range," such
as this helps captains locate fishing spots, and also assists them
in negotiating narrow, tricky passages and avoiding underwater
obstructions that can damage boats and fishing gear. Sometimes
skippers will record this information in notebooks; more often,
they will memorize it.5 Although this basic system
of navigation is well known to many boatmen, the courses themselves
are usually known only by those who travel the waters of a specific
region. Sometimes, as in the case of marks used to locate a rich
fishing ground, courses are closely guarded secrets known only
to a few. In any case, systems of navigation are worthy of researchers'
attention because of their historic importance to maritime peoples,
and also because they can provide insight into the ways watermen
conceptualize space above and below the water.6
Let us now depart from the contexts within which traditional
knowledge is expressed and look more closely at general categories
of expression: oral traditions, beliefs, customs, material culture,
and foodways.
Notes
1. The concept of occupational
technique
is developed by Robert S. McCarl, Jr., in
his essay "Occupational Folklife: A Theoretical Hypothesis," in Working
Americans: Contemporary Approaches to Occupational
Folklife, edited by Robert H. Byington. Smithsonian Folklife Series, no.
3 (Los Angeles: California Folklore Society,
1978), 3-18.
2. Interview with oyster shucker
Virginia Duggar of Apalachicola, Florida, recorded October 10, 1986, by David
Taylor. On deposit at Florida Folklife Archives, Bureau of Florida Folklife
Programs, White Springs, Florida.
3. For a detailed description of
activities in Maryland oyster houses, see: Paula J. Johnson, "'Sloppy Work
for Women': Shucking Oysters on the Patuxent," in Working the Water:
The Commercial Fisheries of Maryland's Patuxent River, edited by Paula
J. Johnson, 35-51 (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1988)
4. For a fine description of the
expressive dimension of oyster shucking, see: Paula J. Johnson, "'Sloppy Work
for Women': Shucking Oysters on the Patuxent." In Working the Water:
The Commercial Fisheries of Maryland's Patuxent River, edited by Paula
J. Johnson (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1988), 35-51.
5. For illustrations of this process,
see: Hufford, One Space, Many Places, 58; Gary R. Butler, "Culture,
Cognition, and Communication: Fishermen's Location Finding in L'Anse-a-Canards,
Newfoundland," Canadian Folklore Canadien 5, nos. 1-2 (1983):
7-21, and Shepard Forman, "Cognition and The Catch: The Location of Fishing
Spots in a Brazilian Coastal Village," Ethnology 6, no. 4 (1967):
417-26.
6. Anthropological studies of traditional
systems of navigation include: Richard Feinberg, Polynesian Seafaring
and Navigation: Ocean Travel in Anutan Culture and Society (Kent, Ohio,
and London: The Kent State University Press, 1988), Thomas Gladwin, East
is a Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Puluwat Atoll (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1970), and David Lewis, We, the Navigators (Honolulu:
The University Press of Hawaii, 1972).
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