Sunday, October 23, 2011

Spartan Gold: Gorton's Fisherman and more


Ch 1, pg 13
When she'd first donned the waders, he'd made the mistake of suggesting she looked like the Gorton's Fisherman...
Gorton’s of Gloucester is a subsidiary of the Japanese seafood conglomerate Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd., producing fishsticks and other frozen seafood for the retail market in the United States. Gorton’s also has a North American foodservice business which sells to fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s, and an industrial coating ingredients operation. It has been headquartered in Gloucester, Massachusetts, since 1849.

HistoryThe company traces its roots to a fishery called John Pew & Sons. William Pew, son of John Pew, picked up fishing after serving as a Colonial soldier in the French and Indian War. While most people moved West after the war, Pew turned eastward and arrived in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1755. The father-and-son fishery business emerged as an official commercial company, John Pew & Sons, in 1849.

When nearby Rockport’s chief industry, the Annisquam Cotton Mill, burned down, Slade Gorton, the mill’s superintendent, was out of a job. At his wife’s urging, he began a fishing business in 1874 known as the Slade Gorton & Company, and began to pack and sell salt codfish and mackerel in small kegs. This company was the first to package salt-dried fish in barrels. In 1899, the company patented the “Original Gorton Fish Cake.” In 1905, the Slade Gorton Company adopted the fisherman at the helm of a schooner (the “Man at the Wheel”) as the company trademark. Today, he is known as the Gorton’s Fisherman.

In 1906, Slade Gorton & Company and John Pew & Sons and two other Gloucester fisheries merged into the Gorton-Pew Fisheries. They made Gorton’s codfish cakes a household name in New England. The company offices were located at 372 Main Street, Gloucester, in the same building where Gorton’s Main Office is located today.

The company went into the fish-freezing business in the early 1930’s. In 1949, Gorton-Pew made headlines when it drove the first refrigerator trailer truck shipment of frozen fish from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to San Francisco, California – a trip that took eight days. In 1953, the company was the first to introduce a frozen ready-to-cook fish stick, Gorton’s Fish Sticks, which won the Parents Magazine Seal of Approval.

In 1957, Gorton-Pew Fisheries name was changed to Gorton’s of Gloucester; in 1965, it became The Gorton Corporation, and it is now known as Gorton’s. In 1968, Gorton’s merged with General Mills, Inc., as a wholly owned subsidiary.

In May 1995, Unilever bought Gorton’s from General Mills. In August 2001, Unilever sold Gorton’s and BlueWater Seafoods to Nippon Suisan (USA), Inc., a subsidiary of Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd., for US$175 million in cash.

In 2005, Gorton's acquired King & Prince Seafood of Brunswick, Georgia.

The iconic slogan, "Trust the Gorton's Fisherman," produced in 1978, and the familiar yellow slicker and beard has made the Gorton's Fisherman a recognizable pop culture icon. In particular the Gorton’s Fisherman, has been featured on the "Late Show with David Letterman" numerous times:
--On the January 12, 2007 show and again on the January 7, 2008 show David Letterman sported a yellow slicker, hat and beard and acted out an improvised Gorton’s Fish Stick commercial as the Gorton’s Fisherman complete with a box of Gorton's Fish Sticks.
--The Gorton’s Fisherman made the number seven spot on the “Top 10 Answers to the Question How Rainy Is It?” on April 16, 2007, which read “Number 7. It’s so rainy Regis’s guest host today was the Gorton’s Fisherman.”
--The Gorton's Fisherman also made the number five spot on the "Top 10 Surprises in 'Titantic'" list on January 8, 1998, which read, "Number 5. Graphic love scene between Kate Winslet and the Gorton Fisherman."

Other notable pop culture appearances include:
--In the 2006 Halloween edition of the popular cartoon website, Homestar Runner, The King of Town is dressed as the fisherman in the Gorton’s logo.
--On February 6, 2005, during Super Bowl XXXIX, the Gorton's Fisherman appeared in a Mastercard commercial featuring 10 legendary advertising characters from various food and household products.
--In the movie remake of the classic TV series "Bewitched" (2005), Nicole Kidman's character, Samantha Stephens, encounters the Gorton's Fisherman during a trip to the supermarket. The image of the Gorton's Fisherman on the box comes to life and speaks to her when she picks up a Gorton's package from the frozen food section.
--Fans of the New York Rangers of the NHL often taunt their rival team, the New York Islanders and its fans. In the mid-1990s, the Islanders briefly changed their uniform from their traditional logo to a more new-age logo that featured a fisherman that many thought resembled the Gorton’s logo. Rangers fans have been known to chant, “We want fishsticks!” at both Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum during games between the teams.
--In an edition of WWE Magazine, the feature “Would You Buy This?” was a parody of Gorton’s, calling it, “Orton’s and replacing the fisherman with wrestler Randy Orton.
--The Gorton’s Fisherman has been the answers to questions/ puzzles on "Jeopardy!" and the "Wheel of Fortune" game shows.


Panama hat worn by Hrry Truman
Sam tipped his tattered Panama hat at her.
A Panama hat (sometimes informally among hat enthusiasts, just a Panama - see Isthmus of Panama) is a traditional brimmed hat of Ecuadorian origin that is made from the plaited leaves of the toquilla straw plant (Carludovica palmata). Straw hats woven in Ecuador, like many other 19th and early 20th century South American goods, were shipped first to the Isthmus of Panama before sailing for their destinations in Asia, the rest of the Americas and Europe. For some products, the name of their point of international sale rather than their place of domestic origin stuck, hence "Panama hats."

The 49ers picked up these hats in Panama, and when President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Panama Canal construction, he wore such a hat, which increased its popularity. They're also known as a Jipijapa, named for a town in Ecuador, one of the centers of the hat trade. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a use of the term as early as 1834.

Glorified during the 19th century, the Panama has since been considered the prince of straw hats. The Ecuadorian national hero and emblematic figure Eloy Alfaro helped finance his liberal revolution of Ecuador through the export of panamas. The reputation of the hat was established by Napoleon III, Edward VII, and some other aficionados.

The pear-shaped gold and jade brooch was said to have belonged to a local woman named Henrietta Bronson, one of the first victims of the notorious outlaw Martha "Patty" (aka Lucretia) Cannon
Cussler goes into great detail on Martha Cannon's career - but there is no such person. (A woman named Martha Cannon did exist but lived several decades after the fictional Martha Cannon: Martha Maria Hughes Cannon (July 1, 1857 – July 10, 1932) was a Welsh-born immigrant to the United States, a physician, Utah women's rights advocate and suffragist, and Utah state senator. In 1896 Cannon became the first female state senator elected in the United States, defeating her own husband, who was also on the ballot.)

Cannon established what many local historians had termed a reverse underground railroad...loaded onto ships headed down the Nanticoke River bound for Georgia's slave markets.
Cussler implies in this sentence that the Nanticoke River goes all the way to Georgia, but actually it ends at Chesapeake Bay and another body of water would take the ships (fictional, in this case) to Georgia.
The Nanticoke River is a major tributary of the Chesapeake Bay on the Delmarva Peninsula. It rises in southern Kent County, Delaware, flows through Sussex County, Delaware, and forms the boundary between Dorchester County, Maryland and Wicomico County, Maryland. The river course proceeds southwest and it empties into the Chesapeake at Nanticoke, Maryland. The river is 64.3 miles (103.5 km) long. A 26-mile ecotourism water trail running along the River was set aside in July 2011 by Delaware state and federal officials, contiguous with a 37-mile water-trail extending through Maryland to the Chesapeake Bay.

Its main tributaries are Marshyhope Creek on the north side and Gravelly Fork and Broad Creek on the south side. Notable communities situated along the river include the towns of Nanticoke, Bivalve, Vienna, and Sharptown in Maryland; and the city of Seaford, Delaware.

According to a study paid for by the town of Vienna, the English explorer John Smith travelled up the Nanticoke River and mapped it, and visited with Native Americans in their settlement, now believed to be Vienna.

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