Gloucester Alumni

By Peter Prybot
Courtesy Gloucester Daily Times

In 1941, creative Cape Ann assigned an 8-year-old native son, Ronald Gilson, the task of recording Gloucester waterfront and fishing industry history from the late 1930s to the early 1970s. It also gave the youngster a deep love for those two influences on the city and a front-row seat to observe and live them out.

Gilson, 73, has just completed that job. The new author has received a shipment of his finished book, "An Island No More: The Gloucester I Knew".

"I was on the waterfront by the time I was 8 years old," said Gilson, who grew up on Dog Hill in Ward 2. His mother then packed fish, and his father tended bar to put food on the family's table. Neither parent approved of their son hanging out on the docks.

"On my 15th birthday I ran the water boat, Wenham Lake, and I had a front-row seat to every boat in the harbor," Gilson said. The Wenham Lake delivered fresh water to fishing vessels. The teenager skippered the water boat from 1944 to 1948.

Gilson continued his long-term assignment by later working at Cape Ann Fisheries, briefly crewing on the Gloucester dragger Little Joe, and on "Huckleberry" Genovese's seiner Shannon, and even making a trip as an observer on the historic schooner Adventure.

The native son briefly left Gloucester to attend and graduate Boston University and serve five active years in the Marine Corps before returning home for good in 1961 to raise a family with his wife, Joan. Gilson soon got another front-row seat to the city's waterfront and fishing industry by owning and operating The Gloucester Marine Insurance Agency from 1972 to 1984. "I insured 90 percent of the fleet then," he explained.

During Gilson's waterfront years, he either took photos of, or collected other's pictures along with newspaper clippings of pertinent waterfront and fishing industry events, people and fishing vessels and neatly stored these in scrapbooks. His mind stacked memories, too.

Right now, he said, "I'm still in love with this city and its waterfront and fishing industry. The Gloucester waterfront has sustained this family and put me where I am today." He is the father of two grown sons and grandfather of three.

Gilson's Payback

After retiring in 1993, Gilson already had a special way in mind to express his gratitude to Gloucester, its waterfront and fishing industry. Writing a book "was something on my to-do list," he said. The new author was also glad to finally put all of his collected material into book form, as he did the last four years. "I assembled the book, but the people of Gloucester wrote the story," Gilson said.

During a dedication event for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Gilson met the late best-selling author and historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who later advised him how he should proceed with his book-in-the-making before Ambrose died in 2002. Gilson's lifelong friend, Dr. Richard J. Elliott, a professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans and a former Gloucester resident, edited the work.

"My wife of nearly 50 years, Joan, is the unsung hero of this book," Gilson said. "She did all the typing and computer work. This book would have never happened without her," stressed Gilson, who is acting as its agent and publisher. He contracted C&N Printers of Chelmsford to publish the 380-page, hardcover book, complete with 185 illustrations and a dust cover.

The Book

Right away in his book's prologue, Gilson writes, "Gloucester in the 1940s .... was a self-contained 'city,' an island, literally; the ocean separated us from the outside world. We were a complete entity, supported mainly by our anchor industry - fishing. As a young boy, I thought this fantasy would go on forever; it was a magical time."

But more than 60 years later, much of the Gloucester, and most of the waterfront and the fishing fleet that Gilson portrayed in his book, is no more.

Fortunately, most of the book's 19 chapters record and describe with precision the ebbs and flows, big events, revolutions within different fisheries, fishing methods, and the notable people, companies and fishing vessels of the Gloucester waterfront that Gilson once knew. "This is what I encountered and lived. It's authentic material," he said.

Gilson further embellished the book's contents with personal stories such as that in Chapter 3, titled: "My Front-Row Seat, Wenham Lake." And in Chapter 14, titled: "The Adventure."

"I'm the last living guy who has been aboard that boat" while it was still dory fishing, Gilson said, who was 17 at the time and still remembers that eight-day trip out to Brown's Bank in February of 1951 "like it was yesterday."

In the book's epilogue, Gilson describes today's Gloucester waterfront and fishing industry, and even goes so far as to speculate where the waterfront is headed.

He dedicated the book to two late, noted waterfront businessmen, Joe Cody and Ben Pine, whom he describes as "my childhood friends, protectors, and mentors." Both men owned and managed fishing vessels and were principals in vessel supply companies.

Gilson is especially grateful to Pine and Cody for steering him in the right direction during his younger days on the waterfront. He even named one of his sons, Blake Pine, after Pine. Gilson also recorded many of Cody's waterfront and fishing stories in the book, along with those of another longtime fisherman friend, Louie Knickle.

Gilson will soon experience the sheer joy that other authors know well - receiving his finished book and then picking it up for the first time and looking at it. In hind sight, "writing the book was a big undertaking. I'm going to have some fun now," Gilson said.

"I intend to do a lot of the marketing on my own," he added. Incidentally, Gilson majored in public affairs at Boston University. He has already set up his first book reading and signing. from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18, at the Gloucester Fraternity Club on Webster Street. The book will also be available at local book stores for $32.95 a copy.