Captain Phil Harris (13 page)

In 1989, the couple was ready for the next big step, a 106-foot crab boat. The vessel would be built in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. To an Alaskan, that might seem like a strange place to go for a crab boat, but it was actually a wise choice.

Located on the Gulf of Mexico, the 205-year-old Bayou La Batre is known as the Seafood Capital of Alabama. For decades in the first half of the twentieth century, the town struggled to survive economically, depending largely on the abundance of fish in the area. Local residents used to say, “You can hear anything in Bayou La Batre except money rattling and meat frying.”

That changed after World War II, when the town became known for producing high-quality shrimp trawlers. By the late seventies, Bayou La Batre was known as the Detroit of trawlers. In the ensuing decades, all sorts of fishing vessels, cruise ships, yachts, ferries, tugboats, barges, gambling boats, oil supply vessels, and tour boats were designed and built there.

Vessels depart from Bayou la Batre to fish from the Florida Keys to Mexico for not only crab, but also shrimp and oysters. Fish packaged in Bayou La Batre’s processing plants is shipped all over the world.

Add to the area’s reputation for producing quality boats and its proximity to the fishing industry the fact that labor is much cheaper in that part of the country, and Ralph’s choice seemed logical.

One of his friends, an Alabaman named Mike King who owned a ship named
The Rebel,
recommended Bayou La Batre shipbuilder Elmo Horton to do the work.

The first of three crab boats built by Horton, Ralph and Cornelia’s vessel was 28 feet wide and weighed in at 289 gross tons. The vessel is powered by twin Mitsubishi engines that put out 630 horsepower, with a gas tank that tops off at 25,800 gallons. Cost to build it: $1.5 million. When it came time to name the ship, it was a no-brainer. Ralph would honor his wife.

Elmo Horton is dead now, and his company gone, but his skill and craftsmanship live on and are celebrated around the world every time the
Cornelia Marie
appears on screen.

Ralph’s plan was to sail the new boat from the Gulf of Mexico down the east coast of South America, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast all the way to Seattle. But just as the
Cornelia Marie
arrived at the canal in December of 1989, the United States invaded Panama with the goal of deposing dictator Manuel Noriega, and, for the only time in its history, the canal was closed for military reasons.

Although it was reopened for daylight operations the next day, the disruption of shipping traffic caused a major delay in the
Cornelia Marie
’s voyage. Ralph sat anchored in a waiting line in hundred-degree heat for eight days before his turn finally came to get through the canal. By the time he reached Seattle, it was the first of March and the crab season was well under way.

With no time to search for a captain, Ralph himself served in that capacity that first season. But, if he could find the right man, Ralph hoped it would also be his last season as the full-time occupant of the wheelhouse. He didn’t want to spend all of his time on dry land, but he already had many poles in the water with various financial interests in the fishing industry. Adding long periods at sea on the
Cornelia Marie
year round was not a consideration. “You’ve got to have some kind of a life,” Ralph said.

He and Cornelia were looking for someone they could trust to run much of the operation on his own. For motivation beyond his salary, they would offer their new captain a piece of the pie, part ownership of the boat.

Who would that captain be? While Ralph ran the
Cornelia Marie
that first year, he found himself often within view of another crab boat, the
Shishaldin
. The two boats fished the same territory and seemed to catch a similar amount of crab. Whenever Ralph went back to port to off-load his catch, there was the
Shishaldin
and its captain, Phil Harris, doing the same.

When Ralph brought the
Cornelia Marie
down to Seattle to put in new motors and do other work at a shipyard, he invited Phil to drive over from Bothell.

Phil showed up with Murray Gamrath, whom he planned to use as his relief skipper/engineer. What sticks out in Cornelia’s mind from her first meeting with Phil was his knowledge of boats and his in-your-face confidence.

“I didn’t find out until years later that he’d never engineered a boat,” said Cornelia.

Phil liked to run his boat on instinct, feel, and the knowledge gathered from the better part of a lifetime at sea. He compensated for his lack of technical expertise by always hiring a competent engineer. It’s not like he was lost in an engine room. He had a fundamental understanding of every piece of equipment on board. He was just not interested in the minutiae of operation manuals or blueprints. But he could damn well understand the readings on every gauge and point out any suspicious sound or vibration on the boat before his crew, including sometimes even his engineer, picked up on it.

Phil had an innate confidence that, even if a disaster cost him his key crew members and robbed him of his tools, he could still use his bare hands to fix anything that went wrong. And that confidence eased any concerns his crew might harbor.

“Phil talked very fast,” said Cornelia of that first meeting. “He was real
nervous and smoked a lot, but then, back in those days, almost everybody in the industry smoked.”

Having heard enough from others to know this was the man he was looking for, and having seen nothing that changed his mind when he and Phil came face to face, Ralph moved quickly. He and Phil struck a deal at that very first meeting.

After agreeing to Ralph’s conditions, from the profit margin to be generated to the maintenance of the boat, Phil was offered one-quarter ownership in the
Cornelia Marie
. His chance to operate a state-of-the-art ship and his first opportunity to own a piece of the action? Phil was, for perhaps the only time in his life, speechless.

But he did manage to utter one word, the word Ralph was looking for: “Yes.”

“He had nothing to lose because he didn’t have the money to buy a boat of his own,” said Ralph. “On my end, I got a guy who was a good fisherman and took care of the boat. And, having seen others leave for better offers, I figured, if I had a guy with equity in the
Cornelia Marie,
it would be harder for him to walk away.

“He got a quarter interest in the boat the day I met him and he kept it until the day he died.”

Ralph continued to skipper the boat on occasion, fishing for halibut, while Phil was in command in the hunt for crab.

With the power of part ownership and a boat beneath his feet worthy of the toughest challenges the Bering Sea could send its way, Phil knew the third element he would need for success was a crew capable of matching his passion, determination, and skill.

He trusted Murray Gamrath to serve as relief skipper/engineer, but he would need another crew member, equally versatile, to take over when either he or Murray wasn’t there or was heeding the demand of his body for a few precious hours of sleep.

While out on the Bering Sea, Phil looked out the window of his wheelhouse as if the man he was looking for was going to appear before him. And sure enough, he did.

Fishing near the
Cornelia Marie
was the
Seabrooke
. Phil knew all the crew members on every boat in the fleet, and he knew that Tony Lara was one of the best of the group, a multitalented, hardworking crabber. He also knew, from the scuttlebutt that floats around every bar in Dutch Harbor, that Tony didn’t get along with his captain.

So Phil, never known for subtlety, called the
Seabrooke
and asked the captain to put Tony on the phone. Even though Phil and Tony had never met, Phil acted as if they were old buddies, telling him gruffly, “I hear you’re getting off the
Seabrooke
. Come work for me.”

Tony said he wasn’t so sure he was getting off the
Seabrooke,
and he was sure that, if he did, he didn’t want to hop right onto another crab boat without a break.

For four days the two ships fished in the same area, and for four days Phil kept calling Tony, insisting that he jump ship and join Phil’s crew.

Finally, Tony relented, telling Phil, “Fine, screw it. I’ll come to work for you.”

Tony never regretted his decision.

“I liked Phil,” he said. “We butted heads because I was a prima donna, but I learned a lot from him and respected him.”

Some of that high regard was generated by Phil’s treatment of his deckhands, who would generally work twenty hours and sleep four.

“If you’re not in pain, you’re not crab fishing,” said Tony. “You can work your crew real hard, but you’ve got to respect them and take care of them. Phil protected us, driving the boat in a manner that kept us safe. He taught me a lot that helped me when I was a captain. The biggest thing I learned was to hire a good crew, get people who want to be there.

“Phil didn’t micromanage the boat. When I ran the boat, he left me alone. When he’d take time off to go home, he’d tell me, ‘It’s in your hands. I can’t run the boat from Seattle.’ ”

While Phil may appear ferocious to
Deadliest Catch
viewers, that’s not the way he was with his crew.

“He wasn’t a yeller,” said Tony. “He’d insult you if you screwed up, but that didn’t happen very often. Because of the standards Phil applied in hiring his deckhands, there weren’t any idiots among them. We had a crew that was dedicated to catching crab, so he didn’t need to crack the whip to get us to work.”

•   •   •

The
Cornelia Marie
was grey and white when Phil became the captain. As was usually the case, he had his own idea. He wanted blue and yellow, and that’s what he got, giving the vessel a distinctive look that would one day be recognized around the world.

Five years later, in 1995, Phil had another eyebrow-raising idea. He wanted to expand the boat, cutting into the middle of the hull to add twenty-one feet to the ship’s length. That would enable the
Cornelia Marie
to take on more fuel and accommodate more holding tanks, placing it among the world’s largest crab boats in terms of capacity for hauling crab.

“He had talked about that a lot, but I was against it at first,” Ralph said.

Ralph eventually gave in. The estimated cost to stretch the boat was $200,000. Looking at the promise of long-term profits, he and Cornelia took out a loan to finance the job.

“It was kind of scary to borrow so much and not know for sure if it would pay off,” she said, “but Phil convinced us it was the right move, and it was.”

Ralph disagrees to this day. “I wish we’d never done it,” he said. “We almost had the boat paid for at that point. So we added another two hundred thousand dollars for the work, but then guess what? The crane wasn’t big enough. It looked like a toothpick up there.”

Cost of a new crane: $40,000.

“Then guess what?” he said. “The engines weren’t big enough.”

Cost of two new engines: more than $200,000.

There seemed no end to it, said Ralph. Every change led to another change, from tubes to shafts to pumps.

Final cost of the entire project: around $1.5 million.

“It cost us almost as much to stretch the boat,” he said, “as it cost to build it in the first place.”

And the benefits, according to Ralph, did not materialize as anticipated. Lengthening the vessel increased its capacity from 200,000 pounds of crab to 300,000. But the extra time at sea required to catch the additional load ate up a large chunk of the profits.

The expansion work was done north of Seattle in a Puget Sound shipyard. The hours of retrofitting were long and the work grueling, but baseball provided a welcome respite. Tony, his brother Dean, and some of the shipyard workers regularly attended Seattle Mariner games at the Kingdome during the time the
Cornelia Marie
was being stretched.

The 1995 season ended with the California Angels tied with the Mariners for the final American League postseason spot. There would be a one-game playoff at the Kingdome.

Tony’s brother got in line early on the morning playoff tickets went on sale and was able to get enough seats to include Tony and Phil. “We’re going to see the Mariners,” Tony told his captain.

“Oh no,” said Phil. “We can’t do that, because today is the day we get fuel for the boat.”

He suggested that Tony give the tickets to Teresa, who was by then Phil’s wife, and one of her girlfriends.

When the first pitch was thrown, Tony and his fellow workers were waiting on the
Cornelia Marie
for Phil, but he was nowhere to be seen. Not then. Not all day. Nor did they ever learn where he had been.

“We sat there,” remembered Tony, “tied to the damn dock, waiting to go get fuel, listening to the game on radio, knowing that Teresa and her little friend were sitting in our seats.

“Phil might have died a lot younger and never been on television if he had shown up at the boat that day,” joked Tony.

•   •   •

Despite all the success Phil enjoyed aboard the
Cornelia Marie,
it took until 1996, six years after he took control of the ship, before he felt he
had finally gained the respect of the top crab boat captains on the Bering Sea.

That respect came, in Phil’s mind, not on the high seas, but on dry land in a meeting room in Dutch Harbor. It came not after a chilling encounter with a giant wave, but after a hot debate among crabbers about the pros and cons of a possible labor strike.

As the group was breaking up, Kevin Campbell, owner of the
Arctic Lady
and one of the leaders of the crab fleet, came up to Phil to get his opinion.

Phil responded matter-of-factly, as if he had those kinds of conversations all the time, but what he kept hidden was a feeling of deep satisfaction. The rowdy, stringy-haired rebel who had long suffered from a lack of credibility was finally being taken seriously, his views sought, his leadership recognized. The man who had covered up his insecurity with bravado needed to do so no longer.