Alice Jacobsen

Alice Jacobsen is the wife and mother of fishermen. Her husband, Jack Jacobsen owned the Narragansett, the first stern trawler built in the United States. During the fisherman’s strike in 1985-86, he used the vessel as a shooting boat (dynamiting for oil) and bringing divers to explore the wreck of the passenger ship the Andrea Doria.

“It was a different life. You’re introduced to all of this. I’ve spent many, many hours on the dock in the car waiting for him. Even the children came. I can remember him saying ‘I’ll just be 10 minutes’, then 2 hours later. I did a lot of knitting in the car.  But you know, he spent a lot of time away from the family and was not around for events. Never around for graduation. My sister got married. He said, ‘I got to go to work, got to keep the business going’. So, I was alone for that. And then when the children came, I was alone for that too, because he was always out of at sea when we delivered. But I mean to say all those times like that, they’re important. But he can’t be in two places at the same time, so you just need to be understanding of that.”

“Well, I was extremely proud of my son when he became captain and crew member. I told my husband what an outstanding job he was doing. Another proud moment was when I christened our new boat, the Eagle. All our family and friends were there too. I was part of my husband’s accomplishments, his work ethics and reputation as a captain.”

“We had divers from California that came to dive on the Andrea Doria. It was a very deep waters, very dangerous waters, and they had to have a decompression chamber on the on the ship where they could de-compress. So, he worked doing that for some time, and I think they got some souvenirs from the ship.  The photographer was from Canada, and he was taking pictures, down below. They brought their tanks to the house, and they were filling up their air tanks, it was quite a project. Our son was out on one of those trips, too. The weather was very, very bad weather. It wasn’t too often that they had good weather that he could go down. Thank God for the decompression chambers. I think that was called ‘Mother’. It was a lot of commotion going on at the time.”

“How did we meet? Well, I loved to roller skate, and I went with my friend to the roller rink in Lincoln Park in Dartmouth. My husband was there because he had come in from sea that day. We hadn’t met yet. I was skating around, but I noticed he wasn’t doing any skating. He sort of looks lonesome and I stopped to talk to him. I said, ‘God, you’re looking so lonesome. Why don’t you put on a pair of skates and skate?’ He said, ‘Well, I can’t do that because I’m a fisherman. I can’t take a chance of falling. I can’t be breaking legs.’ I said, ‘That makes sense.’ He says to me, ‘I’d like to have your number.’ I wasn’t used to that. I thought he was quite forward. But believe it or not, he was shy in a way, too. So anyway, I just skated away that night. I never stopped to talk to him again.

Well, I remembered his name and the person I saw. He was stuck in my head. So, one day I get up the strength and I called. I was so nervous. All my insides were shaking because I had never, never done anything like that. So, I called, and his mother answered the phone, and she spoke with a deep accent. Being Norwegian they spoke Norwegian most of the time. But anyway, I said, ‘Oh, excuse me, is Jacob there?’. She says ‘Yah. He just come in.’ So, he came to the phone, and he was surprised. We talked a little bit. Then he asked me out and I agreed. He said, ‘I’ll come pick you up.’ I said, ‘Okay.’  

When he called to tell me he was coming, he said he was going to toot the car horn. I said, ‘Oh no, no tooting the horns. You’ve got to come in and meet my family.’ He did survive that and that was the beginning. That was how we started. We went out, we had a nice evening, and he was very nice. It was very nice and that story continued. So, that’s when life changed big for me.”