Hi, Joey,
Ever since I posted my rant about Google’s placing of the first Coast Guard Air Station at Harbor Look rather than on Ten Pound Island, I’ve heard from a number of your readers.
There seems to be a lot of questions over which came first; The US Fish Hatchery or the Coast Guard Air Station? My picture attached is a coast guard photo of the island taken in 1900 just a year after the Fish Hatchery was established on the east end of the island. The hatchery buildings and lighthouse buildings are as they appeared at that time which was 25 years before the US Coast Guard established Air Station Gloucester on the Island.
I’ve tried to find more information about the fish hatchery but details are lacking. All I can establish is that they raised fish from eggs brought to the island by research vessels and some contracted fishing vessels. I remember being told they raised Cod from eggs and also Lobsters from eggs but can’t seem to find the details. Even though it was over 100 years ago, it’s amazing how much old data and pictures keeps making it’s way to Google. I did find a Google Book with a great picture of the Air station from a post card but cannot figure out how to copy or print it.
Bill Hubbard
Good Morning Gloucester 
Hi Bill, I have almost the same photo from 1911, with half a half dozen buildings on 10 lb, but it’s before the Coast Guard Station. It’s printed from a 5×7 glass negative, which I’ll post it on GMG in the next month or two.
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Since you asked! Here are some of the sticky details of fish spawning at the Hatchery. Below is an excerpt recounted by Fred Hunt and recorded by Peter Parsons and Peter Anastas in their marvelous out-of-print book, “When Gloucester Was Gloucester:Toward an Oral History of the City” (1973). There are a couple of copies at the Sawyer Free chock full of explanations and, shall we say, creative analogies:
See there’s certain times a year, spawning times for fish. And whenever fish is spawning, they don’t move around, they stay where they drop the spawn. And they’re like a woman. They get sick, you know. They don’t feel good, when they’re spawning. And the males will hang around soon’s they spawn to…They let go the milt in them, you know. The white in them. That’s what fertilizes. And you see the beam trawlers they’d go along and scrape all the bottom up. It’s true. And because fish have certain feeding grounds, you can tell the bottom-feeding grounds for fish.
I first come here they had a fish hatchery out Ten Pound Island. They used to have fellas go ‘round collecting in the spring. Like codfish, pollock and stuff. And they’d go aboard them gillnetters and squeeze the ripe spawn out of these fish. And then they’d take a male fish and they’d squeeze him and got so much milt. Bring them in in big cans. And they’d hatch these fish out in the hatchery.
Thank you for your wonderful posts!
Lise
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AWESOME PIC!!! I’ve never seen 10lb with biuldings on it execpt the lighthouse. Sheesh Fred we really have to wait a month for that pic….LOL
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Bill,I have two more pictures of Ten Pound and the Hatchery about 1950.I’ll send them on to Joey.
Paul
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Thank you all for your responses. I paint a great many scenes of harbors and their boats – the way they used to be in the early-mid 1900’s. And I try to present an historically correct scene whenever I can. Because of that, I’m continually searching for old pictures. Just the lighthouse and its’ auxilliary buildings on Ten Pound Island have been changed a number of times over the years and then there was the fish hatchery and then the USCG Air Station – an always changing scene
Paul and Fred, I’m looking forward to the pictures you’r going to post. And Fred, do you have any of the movie set(s) that were once on Salt Island? That would be interesting too.
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I’ll send Joey my Ten Pound Island post this week. I have one photo of the 1919 movie: Bride 13. It’s of the castle they built on Salt Island as a set. I print it from the 5×7 inch glass negative.
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Several years ago I donated a couple of images to the Cape Ann Museum of buildings being erected on Ten Pound Island. Perhaps they have them in catalog. I think I also reserved a couple. I’ll look.
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