Oyster pirate: Difference between revisions

[[image:Oyster pitatespirates, Harpers 1884.jpeg|thumbjpg|300px|thumb|Oyster pirates on the [[Chesapeake Bay]] in 1884]]

An '''Oysteroyster pirate''' is a name given to personsperson who engage in the [[poaching|poaches]] of [[oyster]]s. It was a term that became popular on both the west[[West andCoast eastof coaststhe ofUnited States]] and the [[East Coast of the United States]] induring the nineteenth19th century.

The term "oyster pirate" appeared in several literary works by [[Jack London]]. London usually used the term without explanation ("I wanted to be where the winds of adventure blew. And the winds of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San Francisco Bay").<ref>''{{Cite web |date=2006-04-10 |title=John Barleycorn,'': [Chapter VII |url=http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/JohnBarleycorn/chapter7.html Chapter|access-date=2023-08-18 VII]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060410230504/http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/JohnBarleycorn/chapter7.html |archive-date=2006-04-10 }}</ref> Writers about London also use the term without explanation ("he was a sailor, seal-hunter, tramp, fish warden, oyster pirate, cannery worker, jailbird, boxer, and gold digger"),<ref>{{Cite book |last=MD |first=John J. Ross |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8hc9J2cHAAC&dq=jailbird,+sailor,+seal-hunter,+oyster+pirate,+novelist,&pg=PA169 ''|title=Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough: The Medical Lives of Famous Writers |date=2012-10-16 |publisher=St. Martin'',s Macmillan,Publishing 2011,Group [http|isbn=978-1-250-01207-4 |language=en |access-date=2023-08-18 |archive-date=2023-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230818072137/https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8hc9J2cHAAC&lpg=PA169&ots=HBD_YmGkos&dq=jailbird%2C%20sailor%2C%20seal-hunter%2C%20oyster%20pirate%2C%20novelist%2C&pg=PA169#v=onepage&q=jailbird,%20sailor+sailor,%20seal+seal-hunter,%20oyster%20pirate+oyster+pirate,%20novelist+novelist,&fpg=false]PA169 p.|url-status=live 169]}}</ref>), as if everyone knew the meaning of the term.

In the context of Jack London's life, it refers to a specific set of conditions peculiar to the oyster industry in [[San Francisco Bay]] in the 1880s. While San Francisco Bay had a native oyster (the same species found elsewhere on the Pacific Coast), it was never very abundant. By the early 1850s, entrepreneurs began importing oysters from Shoalwater Bay (now [[Willapa Bay]]), Washington Territory. Native West coast oysters were much smaller and had a different flavor thanfrom those from the East coast. When the [[transcontinental railroad]] was completed, large fishery companies in the east sold juvenile oysters to San Francisco entrepreneurs who purchased submerged land from the State of California and grew oysters from transplanted Eastern stock.<ref>{{cite book|last=Barrett|first=Elinore|title=The California Oyster Industry|year=1963|publisher=California Department of Fish and Game|location=Sacramento}}</ref>

By the 1880s the handful of competing oyster companies began consolidating into a single [[monopoly]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Booker|first=Matthew|title=Morgan Oyster Holdings, 1909: Height of Bay Oyster Industry|url=http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/project.php?id=1005|work=[[Between the Tides|Between the Tides Project]], Spatial History Project|publisher=Stanford University|accessdateaccess-date=24 August 2012|archive-date=22 October 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022062621/http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/project.php?id=1005|url-status=live}}</ref> Their harvest of a private commodity from a public space, the San Francisco Bay, led to an opportunity for oyster pirates. Pirates raided the [[San Leandro Oyster Beds|oyster beds]] at night and sold their take in the [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] markets in the morning. The public disliked the Southern Pacific and the oyster growers, and liked cheap oysters. As a result, the oyster pirates had considerable public sympathy and police were reluctant to take action against them.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Booker|first=Matthew|title=Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay|journal=Pacific Historical Review|date=February 2006|volume=75|issue=1|pages=63–88|doi=10.1525/phr.2006.75.1.63}}</ref>

Jack London described oyster piracy in his autobiographical "alcoholic memoirs", ''[[John Barleycorn (novel)|John Barleycorn]]'', in the form of romanticized juvenile fiction in ''[[wikisource:The Cruise of the Dazzler|The Cruise of the Dazzler]]'', and from the opposing point of view of the California Fish Patrol in "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates," from ''[[wikisource:Tales of the Fish Patrol|Tales of the Fish Patrol]]''. Oyster pirating was also listed as one of London's first occupations, after leaving a cannery at the age of fifteen, by Abraham Rothberg in an Introduction to ''The Great Adventure Stories of Jack London'' (1967) and by Eric Hanson in ''A Book of Ages'' (2008).{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}} London owned a boat which he used as an oyster pirate, whose purchase was funded by a loan from his black nanny Virginia Prentiss.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Reesman, Jeanne Campbell |title=Jack London's racial lives : a critical biography |date=2009|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-3970-2|location=Athens|oclc=712062157}}</ref>

Oyster pirates also operated on the east coast of the United States beginning in the 18th century. These disputes often focused on increased [[privatization]] of what had been public rights, providing an obvious inspiration for later West Coast activities.<ref>{{cite book|last=McCay|first=Bonnie|author-link= Bonnie McCay |title=Oyster Wars and the Public Trust: Property, Law and Ecology in New Jersey History|year=1998|publisher=University of Arizona Press|location=Tucson|isbn=0816518041|pages=246}}</ref> Oyster pirates also appeared in the [[Chesapeake Bay]], especially from the second half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century during the [[Oyster Wars]].<ref name="wennersten">{{cite book|title=The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay|last=Wennersten|first=John R.|publisher=Tidewater|location=[[Centreville, Maryland]]|year=1981|isbn=0-87033-263-5}}</ref>