We take a look this week at two more seafood companies that operated in the former West Yard of the South Portland shipyard after the end of World War II. We’ve written previously about the first three seafood companies that arrived in 1947: Quality House Specialties sardine cannery, George J. Kern’s seafood company, and LobLure, the business that experimented with artificial lobster bait.
Paul S. Davis, vice president, and Russell Yelton, president of Mid-Central Fish in 1937 when the company opened at Central Wharf in Portland. Davis established Casco Fisheries in 1948. South Portland Historical Society photo
In 1948, two more fish companies came on the scene and a smelly mystery began. Casco Fisheries and Deep Sea Products were both newly-founded businesses, run by people experienced in the seafood industry.
Casco Fisheries, sometimes also called Casco Bay Fisheries, was founded by Paul S. Davis (not to be confused with Paul I. Davis, Jr., the owner of the Cape Red & White supermarket on Cottage Road).
Paul S. Davis was born in New York in 1903. He had previously been employed by Mid-Central Fish Company in Boston. When that company relocated in 1937 from the Boston Fish Pier to Central Wharf on the Portland waterfront, Davis was the company vice president and came here to take charge of the fish handling.
It was considered a big boost to the Portland waterfront when Mid-Central Fish moved here. The company had the capacity to process about 12 million pounds of fish per year. John Toft of Peacock Canning, who was serving as the head of the Marine Committee for the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, was credited as playing a part in bringing about the move.
Paul Davis remained with Mid-Central Fish through WWII, then left and joined Maine Fillet Company on Holyoke Wharf in Portland where he served as vice president and general manager.
In this July 1942 image, two Liberty ships are tied up at South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation (also known as the West Yard, and later known as New England Shipbuilding). The ship on the right is nestled between “Outfitting Pier 1” (the long pier on its left) and “Crib 1” (the short pier on its right). Crib 1 was home to Casco Fisheries from 1948 to the early 1950s. Outfitting Pier 1 was home to Deep Sea Products, a fish meal manufacturer, from 1948 to 1955. South Portland Historical Society photo
In 1948, Paul Davis made headline news when he leased Crib 1 at the West Yard of the former South Portland shipyard. Davis announced that Maine Fillet Company had been sold and that he was going off on his own to start a new fish processing plant. He immediately began remodeling the crib and, on April 21, 1948, his new Casco Fisheries opened for business.
He initially employed 15 men and 12 women to run the plant. Casco Fisheries processed groundfish with its primary focus being redfish, which they sold to customers in the Midwest as red perch fillets.
Also in April, 1948, a new company known as Deep Sea Products leased Outfitting Pier 1 at the West Yard, right next to Crib 1. Deep Sea also leased boiler house No. 2, allowing them to supply steam to their new plant, and to other tenants in the West Yard, as well.
The new company was headed by James McDonald, the manager of Trident Packing in Portland, with financial backing provided by Nicholas Ludington of Pennsylvania, who was also an owner and president of Trident. You may recognize the Ludington name from Ludington Airlines, the airline that Nicholas founded with his brother Charles. The airline went bankrupt in 1933 and merged with Eastern Air Transport, which then changed its name to Eastern Air Lines in 1934.
James McDonald, who had been running Trident Packing’s sardine factory on Brown’s Wharf in Portland, saw an opportunity in establishing a fish meal plant to handle waste products from its own factory and other fish processing plants throughout the region. Deep Sea Products would also purchase pogies for its operation. Pogies, also known as menhaden, are an oily, bony fish that are part of the herring family. Considered an inedible fish, pogies would inhabit coves and prevent the common herring, used as sardines, from coming in.
Whether it was fresh pogies or by-products coming in from fish processing plants, all of it could be turned into fish meal that was used as food for farm animals.
In this 1950 image of the post-war West Yard in South Portland, the location of Casco Fisheries at Crib 1 is identified with the number two. Deep Sea Products is identified with the number three, at the old Outfitting Pier 1. South Portland Historical Society photo
Deep Sea Products erected a steel-frame building on the pier and was up and running by August, 1948. Locals at first were pleased with the roughly 25 to 50 seasonal workers who could find employment at the plant. The company was in the news in April, 1949, when it purchased a 40-foot-long, deck-loading barge that it used to transport sardine by-products from the canneries around Portland Harbor to its processing plant.
The problem with processing by-products is often the smell, however, and news reports of a foul smell began in the summer of 1949.
In a story in the Portland Press Herald on June 29, 1949, titled “Thar’s gold in them thar sniffs, says South Portland,” an inspection supervisor with Portland’s Health Department traced a “strong fishy smell” to South Portland. With multiple fish processing plants in the West Yard, there was a lot of finger-pointing. The superintendent of Deep Sea, Dean Pierson, was quoted, “Well, we’re the newest … but we’ve been operating since Aug. 8, 1948, we aren’t doing anything different this week than we’ve done right along, and we’ve had no complaints before. We take every possible precaution against smells. We put in an expensive chlorination system. And when we dry the fish meal a fan pulls all the odors back out of the dryer and puts them down in a salt water chlorine deodorizing tank that carries them off into the sea.”
At that time, Deep Sea Products had 16 employees engaged in production. Quality House Specialties next door had 211 employees at the time, but a State Agriculture Department inspector entered that business and stated, “The smell here is just like you’d get if you were baking a fish in an oven and opened the oven door.”
On this circa 1953 Sanborn map, Casco Fisheries and Deep Sea Products can be seen on the South Portland waterfront. South Portland Historical Society image
Still frustrated by numerous complaints and the mystery of where “The Odor” was coming from, in August, 1950, the Portland Evening Express assigned four of its reporters to seek out the source of the smell. With so many fish processing and storage plants in both South Portland and along the Portland waterfront, most of the reporters were stymied, however, one, “Ellery Queen” Berry, teamed up with an inspector from the Portland Health Department, along with Portland’s health physician and, following a plume of steam emanating from Deep Sea Products across the harbor, claimed that it was Deep Sea that was responsible.
The mystery had still not been solved in June, 1951, when the Portland Press Herald reported on a South Portland City Council meeting: “City Council Chairman Raymond Henley read into council minutes tonight a long letter from Deep Sea Products Company telling all that they had done to prevent unpleasant odors. Last summer ‘the smell’ was the subject of a great debate between Portland and South Portland. Some said it was here; some said it was across the river. Depending on where they lived, of course … corporation counsel for both cities, Barnett I. Shur in Portland and George W. Weeks here, engaged in an acrimonious debate, in private and in the press. Nobody ever pinned the smell on Deep Sea Products or on anyone else.”
Deep Sea Products sold its fish meal processing plant to Maine Marine Products in 1955.
Note: South Portland Historical Society offers a free Online Museum with over 16,000 images available for viewing with a keyword search. You can find it at https://sphistory.pastperfectonline.com and, if you appreciate what we do, feel free to make a donation by using the donation button on the home page. If you have photographs or other information to share about South Portland’s past, we would love to hear from you. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.
Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of South Portland Historical Society. She can be reached at sphistory04106@gmail.com.
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