In last week’s column, we mentioned how George Kern had partnered up with local lobsterman William V. Benson in his seafood business in the former South Portland Shipyard. Let’s take a closer look at Benson and his company known as Benson Lobster.

William Valentine Benson was born in 1917 in Southwest Harbor. His father Peter Benson was a fisherman, so William grew up exposed to the fishing trade. After graduating from college in Massachusetts in 1939, William and his then wife Shirley lived in Waltham for a short time, with her parents, while he took a job working as an insurance salesman.

They moved to a home in Scarborough in the early 1940s. According to an interview in the Portland Press Herald, during World War II, when Benson was “unable to enlist in the service, he became a civilian supervisor of naval small craft operations in Casco Bay, supplying ships of the U.S. Navy and island bases with provisions until 1945.”

During that time, Benson was listed as captain of the Snodgrass.

After the war, Benson spent a year working as a lobsterman in Casco Bay before partnering with George Kern in his George J. Kern Company. Kern was listed as president from 1947 to 1949, with Benson listed as treasurer.

They leased space at Crib 3, a small outfitting pier in the West Yard of the former South Portland Shipyards. Kern was somewhat focused on the crab processing part of the business and Benson had the expertise related to lobsters.

According to Benson, during that time his lobsters were being sold retail, in live and processed form, through the White Anchor Lobstertorium on the South Portland side of the Million Dollar Bridge. When Kern left in 1949 to manage a new company in Portland, Benson was left in charge at the George J. Kern Company.

Kern appears to have left the partnership, as William Benson incorporated a new company in early 1950, known as Benson Lobster Company, located on the same site at Crib 3. Benson Lobster was a wholesaler of lobster, crabs and other shellfish, but William Benson had a much grander plan for his business. Benson Lobster would source some product from local fishermen, but it also owned its own fishing vessels over the years including several 35- and 40-foot lobster boats.

Also in 1950, Benson incorporated a second company, Atlantis, Inc., also operating from Crib 3 at the shipyard, operating as a wholesaler of fish. That company appears to have been short-lived, however, as only Benson Lobster continued in business for the next 10 years.

In 1950, in addition to lobstering in the traditional method using lobster traps, Benson was making plans to test a new method of lobstering, by dragging the sea bottom for lobsters. After about five years of searching for the perfect spot to test out his plans for deep-sea dragging, he found it.

In July, 1954, he started testing by sending his fishing boat out three times to the secret location that was about 90 miles out at sea. In order to prevent competition, he would not reveal the location. While he was not the first to attempt dragging for lobsters, he is believed to be the first person in Maine to attempt it. Benson felt that since there were so many lobstermen catching lobsters in traps close to the shoreline, it didn’t allow for lobsters to grow very large, so by dragging the bottom away from the coast, he thought that he would be able to land more mature, larger lobsters.

According to Benson, the test was a success. They were able to land large numbers of lobsters with the dragging method. There were some problems, however. The first issue was related to the deep-sea nature of the fishing operation and the ability to bring the lobsters up from those depths and have them survive into port. Benson said that they had solved that problem, but he would not provide more specifics as he didn’t want to help potential competitors with the information. The other issue was that Maine’s law prohibiting the landing of larger lobsters meant that he would need to take the larger lobsters (about one third of his dragging catch) to Massachusetts where they didn’t have a maximum size law.

Of course, most local lobstermen in the area were not very happy with the idea of dragging for lobsters. They expressed great concerns over possible damage to the lobster habitat and breeding grounds, and of potential depletion of the lobster supply.

In Theodore M. Prudden’s book About Lobsters, published in 1962, there are some interesting quotes that William Benson provided about his experiences: “We use the otter trawl such as is part of a modern dragger, and our nets are employed with exactly the same principles as those of conventional dragging. We have several adaptations which facilitate use of the gear for lobsters especially. For instance, we have to be careful not to crush or damage them. Therefore, we cannot use rollers under any circumstances. Depths run from 43 to 225 fathoms in our experience. Lobsters are most commonly found on the edge of the Continental Shelf in a general area reaching from Georges Bank to the Virginia Capes …We do not get many salable fish. Fish do not seem to want to hang around places where there are lobsters. As a matter of fact, lobsters must be downright unfriendly because it is very seldom that you catch anything else when there is good lobster fishing …Damage to gear is rather slight under normal circumstances because we work usually on smooth bottom … The weight per lobster is much greater than in pot fishing and there are not many shorts … The troubles of learning were many. Keeping the lobsters after we caught them was the biggest hurdle. We were forced to work in tributaries of the Gulf Stream where water temperatures near the surface were as great as 83 degrees. It took a year to devise mechanical means of sustaining the lobsters aboard a boat. Now we can keep them indefinitely. We make trips varying in length five to 11 days.”

The year 1957 was a particularly difficult year for Benson Lobster. The company was indicted in October, along with three other companies and several individuals, on charges of price fixing (the company was later sentenced and received a $500 fine). Around this same time, one of the Benson lobster boats had engine trouble, requiring the crew to send out a distress signal and be towed to shore by men from the Cape Elizabeth Life Saving Station. Then the company suffered a fire. According to an article in the Lewiston Daily Sun on Nov. 12, 1957: “Fire today destroyed a huge lobster pound in the former South Portland shipyard. Some 15,000-20,000 pounds of the tasty crustaceans were lost and another 10,000-15,000 in a nearby building were saved. The plant, used for storing lobsters between the time they are caught and the time they are marketed, was owned by William V. Benson … firemen saved the lobsters in the other building by connecting a pump to the lines which kept salt water flowing through the storage tanks when the fire burned up the original pumps.”

The fire department determined that the fire was not suspicious. It was believed to have been started by an electric heater in an office.

In December, 1958, William Benson announced that he had started a new company, at the same location in the South Portland Shipyard, which was a manufacturer of canned refrigerant. The company already had four employees and was producing the product in quart-sized cans under the trade name, Cold.

In the spring of 1960, Benson Lobster purchased a 63-foot lobster dragger, the Montecarlo. The company was in the news again in July, 1960, when they imported about 12,000 pounds of lobsters from Newfoundland, which at the time was believed to be one of the largest-ever shipments of lobsters via air. The last mention of the business that we’ve been able to locate was in 1961, when it appears that Benson had shut down the company.

Note: If you have any photographs, documents, or artifacts related to South Portland’s past, we would love to hear from you. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society. She can be reached at sphistory04106@gmail.com.

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