Early Salmon Processing
One of the earliest products the Hudson’s Bay Co. attempted to develop in this area was salmon, beginning in 1823. Success was limited by the inability of the company’s employees to pack the fish properly in salt in barrels so that it would remain palatable. Lack of good sanitation plus poorly-made, leaky barrels caused spoilage. But by 1831 progress had been made in packing the fish so that a trade existed between the Columbia River and Hawai’i. Markets included Hawai’i, San Francisco, and Hudson’s Bay posts in British Columbia that did not have sufficient salmon on hand to supply their wants for the winter. Other small companies came and went during the 1830s and 1840s, shipping salt salmon to the East Coast and elsewhere, but all found the Hudson’s Bay Company too formidable a competitor. Salmon salting reached its peak in the 1860s.
In 1866 William Hume and his brothers almost single-handedly launched the historic salmon fishing boom on the Columbia River. The Humes and their friend Andrew Hapgood began canning salmon near Eagle Cliff in Wahkiakum County. Andrew Hapgood made the cans by hand, a laborious job. The bodies of the cans were cut out by shears, then formed in cylinders and the seams soldered together. The bottom of the can was cut out as a circular blank, and placed in a press to form the bottom of the can. The end was then slipped onto the cylindrical body and soldered together. Workers then filled the cans with salmon, and passed them on so the tops could be soldered on. The tops had a small vent hole in them to exhaust the steam while the fish cans cooked in a boiling water bath. After cooking for an hour, they were removed and the vent hole soldered shut. The cans were then re-cooked for another hour, removed from the boiling water, cooled, washed with soap and water to remove grease, and after several days painted with a mixture of red lead, turpentine and linseed oil.
While the Humes attempted to keep the canning process a secret, it was an impossible goal. By 1873 eight canneries were operating on the Columbia, with six more under construction. Declining salmon runs made it difficult to increase the amount of product available, while the proliferation of canneries that had occurred during the late 1880s resulted in packers struggling to purchase enough fish to make a profit. Further, the rapid growth of the cold storage and mild cure business created even more competition for the available raw product. The times seemed to encourage the formation of a salmon canners’ trust on the Columbia River. Excerpted from Flight of the Bumble Bee, by Irene Martin and Roger Tetlow
Cold Storage Development
It was the late 1890s before the packers paid serious attention to the production of frozen salmon. Just before the 1902 salmon season began on the Columbia, Samuel Elmore proposed that CRPA enter the frozen and mild-cured salmon business on a large scale. While they did have a small freezing unit and a cold-storage plant at the Elmore and Kinney facilities, Elmore made plans to build a much larger plant in the unused Hanthorn cannery at Astoria, so that all of the cold storage and freezing operations could be carried out in a single local plant.
Steelhead was prized in Europe, so Elmore initially focused on purchasing steelhead from other companies and had the Blue Mountain Ice Co. in Portland do the actual cold storage part of the operation. Once the steelhead arrived at the plant, they were washed and then frozen at about 25 degrees below zero. They were then removed from the freezer and glazed by dipping them in ice cold water, wrapped in a parchment-like paper and moved to cold rooms to await shipment. The fish were frozen in the round. When the whole salmon arrived at the markets in Germany, they were thawed and put on display in markets, where they looked as if they had just been caught. The European customers would clean them and serve them whole, usually stuffed and baked.
CRPA’s cold storage facility was instrumental in processing new company product lines, such as frozen crab, shrimp and bottomfish to replace mild-cured salmon. New product lines also provided new employment opportunities for women, who did much of the bottomfish filleting and crab shaking needed to prepare the seafood for market. The “Bumble Bee ladies,” as they were called, were renowned for their expertise producing top quality boneless fillets. The secret lay in having a razor sharp knife, and the company employed a man to do nothing all day but sharpen the filleters’ knives. Excerpted from Flight of the Bumble Bee, by Irene Martin and Roger Tetlow
Wreck of the Silvie de Grasse
Hanthorn Cannery was built partially on a substantial rock that is the purported location for the wreckage of the Silvie de Grasse, a 2,000-ton packet that typically ran between New York and le Havre, France. In 1849, loaded with lumber bound for San Francisco, she ran upon this rock and split. For 18 years part of her hull and her figurehead were visible above the water. In 1867, much of the wreck was salvaged. This was the first major shipwreck on the lower Columbia River.