They call themselves finest kind, the fishermen: many from families that
came across from the Azores generations ago. Names like Silva, Cabral, Dutra,
Sousa, who came to embrace a hard life of long cold journeys, days and nights
filled with wind and water and work. Now tourists take pictures of their boats.
But once upon a time…
when torches were lit in hot southern darkness
when bodies could be bought and sold
when hatred flared—
—fishermen rose to the moment: leaving port here at land’s end to meet
their natural rivals for the catch: a lifeline in the frigid Atlantic
between freedom and death, bodies shivering in the cold, a hand-off
fraught with danger.
***
So much has changed. Once, the fish were plentiful here, shoals and shoals
of them, so thick you’d think you could walk across the harbor. The life
still continues cold, unforgiving, storms and sinkings and fishermen’s families
wailing their grief; and fewer catches every year.
But even those who don’t know the history, those who still compete
for the dwindling stockpiles, those who experience the danger
and the quotas and the hardships—they are still proud of what they do.
They are, still, the finest kind.