September 2019 | SMITHSONIAN.COM 37Summing up the worldview that emerged from
the journey, Steinbeck wrote, “All things are one
thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a
shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the
spinning planets and an expanding universe, all
bound together by the elastic string of time. It is
advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and
then back to the tide pool again.”
He ends the book with a description of the West-
ern Flyer ’s big guy-wire , from bow to mast , vibrating
in the wind like the low note of a pipe organ, as the
boat hunched through big waves on the way home
to Monterey. John and Carol’s marriage ended soon
after their return, and John set about writing his ac-
count of the trip. It was fi rst published
in a 600-page book, Sea of Cortez, co-au-
thored with Ricketts, and including a
300-page scientifi c catalog of the ma-
rine species they encountered. It sold
only 2,000 copies. Ten years later, John
extracted his travel narrative, added
the essay “About Ed Ricketts,” and pub-
lished it as The Log from the Sea of Cor-
tez. It had mixed reviews, and modest
sales at publication, but its reputation
grew over time.
The Western Flyer went on to become
an apex predator in the Pacifi c and Alas-
ka. It helped devastate the great Pacifi c
sardine fi shery, which spelled the end
of Cannery Row. Then it started trawl-
ing for ocean perch, “as if clear-cutting
an ancient forest,” in the words of Kevin
Bailey, a fi sheries scientist who wrote a
book about the Flyer’s career. When the
perch were almost gone, in 1969, it joined
in the rampant overfi shing of red king
crabs and salmon in Alaska. In June 1971,
loaded with 120,000 pounds of salmon, it
half-sank after hitting a reef and was de-
clared a “total loss” by the Coast Guard.
That was the end of its career in the open
ocean, although it continued fi shing in
Puget Sound. By one estimate, a billion
fi sh died on its decks.NOW THE FLYER RESTS in a huge
wooden cradle at the boatyard in Port
Townsend, a mere specter of a ship in
the process of resurrection. Chris Chase,
a chatty, good-humored shipwright in
his mid-50s, is the man in charge. “This
is highly unusual,” he says. “In the boat
business, we don’t do restorations. We
do repairs. If a boat can’t be repaired, we
scrap it and build a new one.”
The wooden boat was far beyond repair. It was a
warped, decaying, disintegrating ruin, with sections
of rot from stem to stern. “But she still had this life
force,” he says. “When they were towing her, they
couldn’t believe how fast she was moving through
the water, like she was happy to be out of the mud
and fl oating again.”
He leads me up a ramp onto the deck, pointing out
her elegant, curving lines. “These boats were built
to be pickup trucks of the sea, with an engine and a
hold, but they still wanted them to be beautiful, and
have that man-shaped soul,” he says. “We’re trying
to preserve the soul ofAfter Ricketts’
death, artists,
writers and
others kept
gathering at the
lab in his honor.
In 1957, some of
them dreamed
up the Monterey
Jazz Festival.CONTINUED ON PAGE 82