the goRtons And sLAdes 13
pound. Going from village to village, he sounded his horn as he ap... -
proached and housewives came running.”
As his sales increased, Gorton began to buy fish by the ton at Glouces-
ter when trawlers arrived from the Grand Banks. Soon he branched out,
selling to wholesalers and supplying taverns, hotels and restaurants. “He
was warm, affable, young; full of drive and ambition. Honesty was his
watchword. His fish were always fresh and preserved in ice.” This account
has all that happening in the 1860s before the death of Gorton’s first wife,
Maria. Clearly he was selling fish earlier than 1883 and likely operated the
fish business on the side for years or was in and out of the cotton mill
business. That squares with accounts that have the company starting in
1868 or 1874. Perhaps it was the mill fire that forced Slade Gorton to be-
come a full-time fish dealer. That he was good at it is indisputable. His
sons proved to be masters of marketing.^11
thoAAMs sL de goRton sR., the senator’s grandfather, joined his older
brother Nathaniel in the company as a young man. By 1889, the compa-
ny’s codfish were being shipped nationally. Gorton’s was becoming a
household name. Tommy and Nat inherited the business in 1892 when
their father died of a heart attack at 60. Just before the turn of the cen-
tury, the company patented the Original Gorton Fish Cake, and in 1905
The Gorton’s Fisherman (“The Man at the Wheel”) made its debut as the
company’s symbol. Today it anchors the Logo Hall of Fame. The company
merged with John Pew & Sons and two other old-line Gloucester firms in
1906 and boasted a fleet of speedy fishing schooners and 2,000 employ-
ees on sea and shore, where it occupied 15 wharves.^12
Thomas Slade Gorton Jr., the senator’s father, had a classic apprentice-
ship. He loved to tell the story about the day he was swept off a Gloucester
schooner in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Luckily, the first mate saw the lad
being slurped up by the swirling sea and managed to retrieve him.
Something of a hellion as a youth, the senator’s father was stubborn,
tough and intensely competitive. At 12, he took a leap on a dare. Jumping
out of a church gallery, his intention was to grab a dangling light and swing
Tarzan-style to the other side of the sanctuary. Unfortunately, he and the
fixture came crashing down in a heap of chagrin and shattered glass.
(When he was 45, he finally paid his penance, donating a magnificent
chandelier to the First Baptist Church in Gloucester.) At 15, Junior got him-
self kicked out of Holderness, an Episcopal prep school in New Hampshire.
Sent fishing by his unamused father, he defiantly joined the Marine Corps
during World War I. The war was over before he made it overseas but he