Herring Processor And Now King Crab
This Is Story Of Howard Wakefield
By MIRIAM J. ANGELL
Howard Wakefield is tall and
spare, at 62 a handsome man with
white hair and a ruddy, out-doors
complexion, an intelligent face and
alert blue eyes. He is a Vice-Presi
dent of Wakefield Fisheries, is a
native of Alaska, born in Wrangell
where his father worked in a store
after he lost out in the gold rush.
In 1900 the senior Wakefield got
himself a boat and a mail contract,
delivered mail around Southeast
ern Alaska, and about the year
1900 made the first census of all
the Indian villages in that area.
Around 1906 he entered the fish
ing business, an interest he was to
pass on to his eldest son, and to
two of the three sons who were
born later of his second wife. How
ard Wakefield’s mother died when
he was four years old, meantime
, leaving a daughter, born in How
can, now a deserted village.
From 1906 until his death in
1954 Howard Wakefield’s father
owned several fishing companies,
beginning with salmon, switching
finally to herring, while sons Low
ell and Howard found King Crab
an interesting prospect as far back
as 1939. Today, 22 years later,
Wakefield, Inc., owns and operates
one of the largest King crab com
panies in Alaska. It’s Reefer King
and Deep Sea reefer ships can pro
cess and freeze greater quantities
of King crab than almost any other
floating units north of Seattle, ex
cepting the factory ships of the
Russian and Japanese fleets. And
thereby hangs a true tale and a
rather ominous problem.
Although the Japanese had been
canning King crab since 1892, and
for some years a very fetv com
panies in Alaska had put up a very
few cases of it, even by 1939 almost
nothing was known of the extent
of the King crab beds in Alaskan
waters. The Federal Government
became interested, during the ’30s
assigned the Fish and Wildlife
Service to investigate, which they
did until they ran out of money.
“There was the Lox, and the
Dorothy, and another boat, and
they were up here making a crab
survey until they ran out of funds,”
Mr. Wakefield remembered.
“When he went south the skipper
of the Lox asked me if I wanted
his net and other gear, so I kept
the net and gear and made drags
and kept records—logged the tides,
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the depths, dates, when and where
we found the crab. Then my
brother and I tried to do something
with crab before the war, but in
1942 I went into the service.” At
the request of General Collette at
Kodiak, Mr. Wakefield was slated
to take charge of the Kodiak City
dock and all craft around the wat
ers of the island but through a
comedy of errors he wound up as
Post Commander of Port Whittier,
later Post Commander in Nenana,
and finally, directing heavy cargo
transfer to river barges at Galena.
“In the meantime my brother
Lowell formed the Wakefield Deep
Sea Trawlers with the trawler
Deep Sea, at that time the largest
on the Pacific coast, to catch and
process King crab in the Bering
Sea. When I got out of service I
went back to Port Wakefield with
my father, who was still in the her
ring business, operated there until
1952, and the next year went with
my brother aboard the Deep Sea.
In 1954 our father died, we bought
the plant at Port Wakefield from
the estate and built it up from
there. We have had some very in
teresting experiences but this bus
iness has been a tough row to hoe,
you might say. From ’46 to ’49 the
operations were practically disas
terous, but then we happened to
catch on and have done fairly
well.”
The Wakefield label is familiar
to consumers all over the south 48,
particularily in the East, still the
largest market for King crab be
cause the company has had an es
pecially energetic broker there
since the beginning of operations.
We asked if they were able to sell
all they process? “We can; for a
while we could sell more than we
could produce. We advertise on a
national scale and have had ads in
LIFE and GOOD HOUSEKEEP
ING, and you know what those can
do for you. Of course, in the east
people were used to eating Maine
lobster, but at Hackney’s in Atlan
tic City, the largest seafood restau
rant in the world, our King crab
is now outselling lobster 2 to 1.
“We spend a lot of money trying
to produce a little better product
than anyone else, and it pays off.
We have 3 biologists who watch
quality control, and bacteria count,
and in Bellingham, where we pack
age most of the crab, we have a
biologist for USDI. The USDI
stamp goes on our product. The
trouble with foreign competition
is the lack of supervision as far as
health standards go. We are re
quired to use stainless steel tables
and other equipment whereas the
Japanese, and probably the Rus
sians will do the same, put their
crab in wicker baskets. At the end
of the day they throw it out on
deck in the wicker baskets, give
it a squirt of salt water, and call
it processed. With canned crab
it’s not so important because when
you retort it that kills all the bac
teria, but with frozen crab, the
bacteria lie dormant until it’s
thawed; then the bacteria count
raises sky high.”
Wakefield, Inc. has five opera
tions in Alaska as well as the plant
in Bellingham, Washington from
which most of the crab is shipped
to distributors. In Alaska there is
the main plant and headquarters
of the company at Port Wakefield
on Raspberry Island. There are
also plants at Sand Point, and Sel
dovia, and there are the two large
trawlers, Deep Sea and Reefer
King. Port Wakefield is a small
town in itself; twelve families live
there, the company operates a
school for the children “in camp”,
(Continued on Page 10)
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