From the Jan. 13, 1928 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

When anyone seeks information regarding the Edgartown fisheries, he is sure to be directed to one of two or three men and one of these is Antone K. Silva. Mr. Silva and a few others have for years taken upon themselves the burden of working for the development of Edgartown’s natural resources and have been largely responsible for the healthy condition of the shellfish business of today. Hence, these men are justly considered as authorities and they live up to their reputations by keeping posted on all the details of the fishing industry and the facts and figures are always at their tongue’s end.

At this time of the year Captain Silva is likely to be found in an attic room of his home, where, as he says, he hibernates in winter. There is a large stove and electric lights which keep the place warm and cheerful, and the room is half filled with nets to be mended or hung, for this is his winter occupation.

Seated upon a pile of nets which furnished a more comfortable resting place than any easy chair yet contrived, Captain Silva puffed at his pipe and conversed upon his life work and the adventures in which he has figured since coming to this country at the age of six years.

He was born on the island of St. George, Azores, and with his widowed mother came first to New Bedford and three years later to Edgartown. Thus, he was reared a Yankee, even to the extent of attending a Protestant church. At the same time, he has never forgotten his native tongue and can converse so fluently in Portuguese that he has served as interpreter in the courts on many occasions.

As a boy he attended first the Edgartown grammar school and then the high school, which he “went through with a hop, skip and jump,” as he explains it. The call of the sea had come to his ears and he longed to answer it. The whaling industry was dying out, but there were a few ships still engaged in the business and he wanted to go.

“I was one jealous and envious boy when Joe Pease showed me his new sea-boots down here on Main street,” he says. “Joe was going whaling and I couldn’t on account of my mother’s objections. But I’ve always been thankful that she did object.”

His first work was in a fish market conducted by Frank Alley in Oak Bluffs. This was a summer job and one that he worked at during school vacations. After leaving school he was employed by Capt. Isaac Norton of Vineyard Haven at both pound and boat fishing, and one season was enough to give him a taste for sea salt. “As I grew larger, you see, I wanted to go into deeper water,” he says.

Deeper water it was, colder and more stormy, too, for he shipped out of Noank on a halibut schooner with Capt. Silas Latham, a noted fisherman.

Captain Silva sailed in western vessels until 1890, becoming naturalized in the meantime, and then returned to Edgartown, which he had not seen for years. There he bought a boat and went fishing and carrying parties until about thirty years ago, when “dragging” for mackerel started.

Captain Silva and Captain Horace Hillman were the pioneers in the movement, fitting out an old Noank schooner that was forty-four years old at the time. Silva hung the nets, the first ones ever hung in Edgartown. The season was successful and both captains decided to outfit by themselves, each one buying a schooner in which they both operated for a number of years. Captain Silva’s vessel fishing came to a tragic end in 1910 when he lost his vessel and one man on the southside of Gay Head.

The loss was a severe blow to him and he gave up vessel fishing soon after, going back to boat fishing, carrying parties and doing some yachting. But in 1912 when the fishermen’s union boycotted some of the vessels, and Captain Bob Jackson needed a crew, Silva agreed to go and for three years he sailed to Georges and South Shoals.

That was the last of his deep water fishing. “It’s a young man’s job,” he says, “and if a man goes to Georges too long, he’ll stay there.”

But his interest in the business has never waned. When the quahaugs in the harbor began to die because of insufficient circulation of the water, the fishermen wanted to cut an opening through the South Beach at Katama, the captain went to the department of public works and laid the case before them.

In the end he was allowed $2,500 to “experiment with,” the state engineers telling him frankly that they did not expect any results different from those previous. That was seven years ago and although it has shifted, the tide still ebbs and flows through South Beach.

The home folks all know Captain Silva and need no guide to show them the way to his shop by the wharves or the loft at his home. Visitors are always welcome and the time is always well spent with this Vineyarder who is tarred with the nets of decades, dry-salted by the spray and wind of scores of winters, and whose brain contains volumes of the history and tradition of the Island’s oldest industry.

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
library@vineyardgazette.com