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"I went up on the Star of Alaska in 1918." It was 1965 and an old timer was spinning a tale for 18-year-old Joe Upton. Of sailing up from San Francisco to Alaska's remote and austere Bristol Bay aboard a square-rigged ship loaded with Chinese cannery workers, Norwegian and Italian fishermen, and American carpenters. They'd drop anchor in some remote Bristol Bay river, the last snow still on the shores. Lower the pile driver and drive a forest of pilings, build a cannery on top. Install the boiler and the canning machines. Finally, the first of the salmon flipping and stirring in the river off the cannery. The run: what they had all come north for and time to launch and rig the sailing gillnetters. And all set on that treeless shore with a steaming volcano looming over them.A few years later, flush from a season on a Bering Sea king crabber, Upton headed north with his own salmon boat at last. That first eye-opening season became the stuff of Upton's award winning Alaska Blues: A Fishermen's Journal. For the next 20 years, as homesteader in a roadless settlement with a floating bar, fish buyer, and finally as gillnetter in what was to become the Legendary Bristol Bay red salmon fishery, Upton fished and also chronicled the powerful drama that is Alaska commercial fishing. His full journey, laid out here, is a riveting tale of what brings young men North, generation after generation.
About the author
In 1965 Joe Upton was one of those teenagers walking up and down the docks of Seattle's Fishermen's Terminal, eager to get on one of the Alaska bound fishing boats. In his first job, the 70 year old mate filled Upton up with tales of a life- time working on the coast, and set him on his career path: commercial fishermen, but story teller as well. After 20 years of working up and down the Alaska coast in all kinds of boats in all kinds of weather, Upton started a publishing company to share with Alaska visitors some of the drama he had seen and experienced as a commercial fisherman. Recently he began working with fisherman/filmmaker Dan Kowalski traveling around Southeast Alaska and making short story telling videos.
