By Sheila Dassatt
The last issue of Maine Coastal News has centered around the Sardine Industry which goes along with the History of Sardines at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. This all started with Sardinefest of 2025 and was successful enough to have Sardinefest 2026! The turnout was great and Mike and I plan to be back too. Mike had his knitting table there and demonstrated how to knit lobster trap heads. These same knots were used in making the seines and the weirs in the mending process. People were very interested in watching and asking questions along the way. The whole idea of preserving very precious history of our fishing industry is definitely worth archiving.
We have written about the sardine carriers and how to catch these silver gems, but let’s talk about what we do after they are caught and brought into the processors. (Of course, this is all past history.) Once I was old enough to work a summer job, my parents said that it’s time to go to work at the sardine factory, just like my mother did at that age. Both of my parents worked at the Stonington Packing Plant. So I was signed into Stinson Canning of Belfast, Maine. It was quite a change in my routine at 16 years old, not one that I especially relished. We had a local radio station called WBME that catered to the working folks. So I started out my day listening to the announcement that said if they had fish for that day. I always was hoping for the announcement that the boat didn’t get in for that day so I could go to the pond and go swimming! That wasn’t usually the case…we usually had a good supply of fish that came in.
Mom would have a good breakfast ready for me and out the door I went, always in the last minute. I had an old ’63 Ford Galaxy that was a tank and went down the hill to the factory just a flyin’and parked right in front of the factory. I kind’ve had my special parking place for her.
The time was 7:00 am and the conveyor belt was starting up with fish on one level and cans on the next. The Floor Ladies would help us tape our fingers up and make sure that we had what we needed for scissors. They were always there if we needed a bandaid for when we missed the fish and got our finger instead. We also had these big heavy plastic aprons to keep us fairly clean and dry. I wasn’t very fast, cutting the head and the tail off of each herring and then stuffing them into a can to fit. The larger herring were called steaks because they were larger in the can. They packed a lot faster than the smaller ones that were primarily called sardines. We were paid by the can and had racks that fit so many on it. Once the rack was filled, a young man would come along and take them to the steamer that cooked them right in the can. In all honesty, it was good honest work and we were proud of how many we could do in a day. I also used to like to see the sardine carrier come in and offload the fish through a large vacuum tube that transferred them to a big vat down below.
As time went on, the boats came less and the herring arrived in a tractor trailer tanker truck that offloaded them in the same manner but from a vacuum tube from the truck to the vats below. The older ladies were simply amazing at how fast they could pack the cans with fish! We always said they had what looked like a packing dance, moving back and forth as they cut and packed the fish. They were fast and darn proud of it!
As the summer wore on, I slowed down my pace, which I have never been a really fast mover, so they moved me down in the basement to pack cans in boxes for shipment. I was able to learn every aspect of the process, right down to the shipping room. One thing they frowned on was when I went back upstairs to do some more packing, I stumbled onto a dog fish on the conveyor that looks a lot like a small shark. My partner that was on the other side of my bench and I grabbed it. We grabbed each end of it and swung it onto the bench beside of us and scared the ladies on the other side. We had fun with it, but the ladies screamed and didn’t see our humor. With this being said, I was able to go to the pond after all for the rest of the summer! They let both of us go and said that we weren’t meeting our quota, plus we were driving them crazy. The next thing was to tell our parents that we were all done for the summer. We only had about a week left before school started. We turned around and did the same job for the next season. The whole crew was a great bunch of folks to work with.
Also the advantage that we had at the factory was that it was also our bait source for our lobster traps. As the chum went down the shoot onto another conveyor, it would drop into a big chum container. We had access to shoveling it out and putting it in fish trays. The only thing that we had to pay for was the salt that we used. These were the good ole days when it was profitable to get our bait without the large overhead expense.
The factory in Belfast continued for a few more years, but as time went on, the availability of herring became less and less due to quotas. The local factories had less due to the herring being more offshore than inshore and the larger boats were more to the Southard. The actual demise of our industry had a lot to do with the pair trawlers coming in and cleaning them up. In the 90’s, Stinson Cannery was purchased by O’Connor’s of Canada so much of the product that was being caught offshore was getting sold to Europe. Read a can and you’ll see where the cans were packed. Nowadays, God only knows where they’re getting their fish.
It was all good while it lasted. I am so proud to have been a part of the industry and carried on tradition while I could.
