Wow, That Looks Like Something You'd Wrap a Dead Fish In!
Every now and again I'm asked to name the most unusual object in the Erie Maritime Museum's collections, and nothing has quite surpassed this one donated in 2017. Translucent, stained, and fragile, it nonetheless carries a huge tale of international border wars and danger, it can be said to symbolize a revolution, and it resulted in liberation. All that, and it truly was used to wrap fish!
On September 15, 1905, the fishing tug E.C.Oggel out of Erie was poaching in Canadian waters when captured by CMS Vigilant, docked behind her here at Port Dover. E.C. Oggel was one of four American tugs the Vigilant chased or captured in that month alone. Courtesy Port Dover Museum.
Our story begins in the turn of the 20th Century and The Lake Erie Fish Wars. While American tugs had been quietly harvesting "Canadian" fish in the waters near Long Point, Canada, it was the intrusion of the Booth Fisheries Company's operations on to Lake Erie that set off decades of conflict. Chicago-based Alfred Booth's early dealings on Lakes Michigan and Superior illustrated both the economic power of wholesaling and market leveraging that could be applied with the use of rapidly expanding transportation systems, particularly the railroads. This would influence the practices and success of fish houses, both American and Canadian, on Lake Erie. It also brought an increasing awareness of practices of overfishing the Canadian waters of Lake Erie, and that Canadian fish were being moved into the American market without tax or tariff paid.
Robert Kolbe's patent diagram shows the block-shaped containers in which filleted fish could be flash-frozen.
The Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries launched two patrol boats, Petrel (1892) and Vigilant (1904), to deter American poaching in the rich fishing grounds near Long Point. Despite her aggressive Captain, Edward Dunn, Petrel had little impact. She was slow-moving and poorly armed -- her equipment included cutlasses! When Dunn took command of Vigilant, however, his patrols proved to be a real deterrent to poachers. Fast and armed with a bow-mounted Gatling gun (and later, four devastating Maxim machine guns), this new ship was able to steam from Port Dover to within firing range of the poachers before their nets could be pulled. The cost to Erie fishermen was steep -- thousands of dollars in lost nets, litigation, and, beginning in 1908, even imprisonment.
Aggressive actions from both sides only escalated the conflict, and inevitably led to loss of life -- a complicated story best told at another time. The Lake Erie Fish Wars, however, set the scene for a technological revolution . . . enter, William Kolbe.
William Kolbe and his protégé, Albert Weis, initially moved to Erie in 1906 to establish a satellite operation for the Sandusky Fish Company, one of Lake Erie's most powerful commercial fisheries. Kolbe's and Weis' fleet of tugs and processing business soon became Erie's largest fish house. In 1911, Kolbe understood that a new business model was necessary, a strategy that would enable him to harvest Canadian fish legally and take advantage of the growing distribution systems in both the United States and Canada. Toward this end, he moved to Port Dover, Ontario, and took on dual citizenship as he created a fish house there. He could catch and process fish in Canada, then choose where to market, either sending them on to Toronto and Windsor, or sending them to Erie, where the fish would travel to Pittsburgh or even New York City.
Fresh fish doesn't stay fresh for long. Without a preservation method to keep Lake Erie fish's delicate flavor intact, there would be no market for such fish when they reached their destinations. What made William Kolbe's strategy work was his son Robert's invention of the flash freezing method for fish. Robert's flash freezing apparatus was installed in Kolbe's fishing tugs in 1923, and at the Erie and Port Dover processing plants in 1924. Robert Kolbe filed for a patent on his method and apparatus on September 12, 1923, seven months before Clarence Birdseye filed for his "Method of Preserving Piscatorial Products", April 18, 1924.
The 1920s saw a marked decline in the production of ciscoes and whitefish on Lake Erie, the result of overfishing as well as changes in habitat. One more bit of Kolbe family genius kept their fish house on top. When the larger whitefish and ciscoes were in decline, William Kolbe found a way to market smaller, then less popular, fish such as yellow perch, walleye, and blue pike. Prior to Kolbe's method, fish were sold whole -- gutted and sometimes beheaded. This left a great deal of work for the cook -- scaling and deboning small fish was tedious and time-consuming, so these otherwise most delicious fish were not in demand. Kolbe simply added filleting to his processing. By cleaning and filleting them before freezing, no preparation was needed prior to cooking, other than defrosting. Labor saved = big value added.
Kolbe offered good employment for women, as their "lighter touch" made filleting these smaller and delicate fish possible. He equipped his cutters with an extremely sharp, thin-bladed knife and a chainmail glove to protect their gripping hand, and paid by the finished pound to discourage waste.
So, this is my current contender for most unusual object in collections:
FN2017.3.1, Courtesy Mason Edwards and Sydney Edwards.
This sheet is part of a continuous roll of waxed paper wrappers, used by workers packaging Lake Erie Blue Pike fish. Kolbe's flash freezing method created blocks of frozen fillets. Blue rectangular guides indicated where the wrapper should be cut to fold around the one-pound block. The cut wrapper measured 10" X 11". When packaging was completed, the Kolbe logo and fish tug drawing were presented on the top of the product. The wrapper was folded around the block of fillets so that “KOLBE BRAND” and “LAKE ERIE BLUE PIKE FILLETS” lettering appeared on the sides of the package.
Sadly, this packaging also reminds us that fresh water fish are all part of a fragile Lake Erie eco-system. A sub-species of walleye, the Blue Pike (Blue Walleye), once plentiful, is now deemed extinct as of 1975, a victim of habitat changes and of its own popularity on the dining table.
