Joseph O'Steen has written a fast paced, exciting novel......Michael Lempe, No Quarter Given Pirate Magazine. ........Joseph O'Steen is a born storyteller whose writing style reminds me strongly of C.S. Forester.....Nina Osiner, Author/Reviewer

Articles by

Nautical Adventure Author

St. Augustine, Florida 

Pink Gold

I remember those warm summer days of 1956. Key West was waking up from the small southern town that it was and being stretched by the influx of shrimp boats from all over the south. I was only six years old and getting ready for the first grade but spent all my time with my father on the trawler Savannah out of Georgia. He was captain and the mate was the young owner who had inherited her when his father passed away. My mother also worked on the boat and all four of us would go to the shrimp grounds for two week trips.

This explosion of the Key West Shrimp industry began when a Mr. Salvador, a fisherman from St. Augustine , had ventured down to Key West looking for the elusive shrimp. To this day, I don’t know what made him think he would find shrimp off Key West , when even the local boats had given up. He borrowed a boat from a man named Thompson and spent a week in the Gulf of Mexico dragging his single net across the sandy bottoms from the west of the main island all the way to the Dry Tortugas.

 On the last, disappointing day he sat in the wheelhouse dejected that his search had day after day brought up empty nets. He watched the sun dip below the horizon as he talked with his deck hand, trying to figure out why they had not found the shrimp.

He reached for his coffee cup and took a sip and noticed the coffee in the cup was sloshing back and forth, then the boat began jerking and noticeably slowing down. The engine strained and sputtered. Both men quickly glanced at each other, then raced out on deck to see the net cables vibrating as if straining under emence weight. Mr. Salvadore raced back to the wheelhouse and backed the engine throttle down and tied the wheel. He ran back to the wench to see the deck hand already engaging it to pull the nets in. When the net broke the surface, the boat heeled to starboard. Both men stared at the bulging bag of the net with its protective whiskers dipping in and out of the sea as the boat gently rolled. The wench strained to lift the full net over the rail and onto the deck. The deck hand stretched to reach under the net bag and pulled the slip knot. The rush of the escaping shrimp swept him to the side of the boat as hundreds of pounds of pink shrimp poured from the bag pushing him to the rail as if a dam had burst. Mr. Salvador had found the pink gold and the secret. The secret was that the Key West shrimp burrow in the sea bottom during the day and come out to feed at night.

By the time my father got the Savannah to Key West and fitted her out with gear and grub every fisherman, who could scrape up the money for the trip, from The Carolina Capes to the tip of Texas had arrived at Key West .  I remember you could walk across boats from one dock to another without ever touching land. When the fleet put to sea the night lights of all the boats looked like a city floating in the gulf. To a six year old who thrived on the salt air and his time at sea, it was a most exciting time to live.

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