A PAGE FROM HISTORY: TUNAMAN’S MEMORIAL EVOKES A STORIED ERA ON POINT LOMA’S PAST by Mr. Eric Duvall in Point Loma / OB Monthly newspaper – March 15, 2024 –
A Page from History: Tunaman’s Memorial evokes a storied era of Point Loma’s past
“The tuna fishing industry had a profound influence on the Roseville community, also known as ‘Tunaville’. Those who remember it have tales to tell. Commercial fishing can be a lucrative business. It also can be a very dangerous business. The tuna fishing industry has had such a profound influence on the development of Point Loma’s “Roseville” community, (aka.“Tunaville“) that the area was once widely known as the “Tuna Capital of the World.” But in San Diego these days, the industry is largely referred to in the past tense.
Just south of the public fishing pier on Shelter Island stands the dramatically beautiful TUNA MAN’S MEMORIAL (aka. T.M.M. – ed.) sculpture. An enormous Pacific bluefin, several hundred pounds at minimum, breaches the surface of the water wildly, but its battle is already lost. The great fish is hooked by a three-pole rig. The three fishermen brace themselves in the rack, frozen in unison, seconds before they, as one, swing the big tuna onto the deck of their boat.
The location commands an unobstructed 180-degree view of downtown San Diego, Naval Air Station North Island, the Submarine Base, Ballast Point, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, Point Loma’s “Old Spanish” Lighthouse, Mexico’s Coronado Islands, and … open ocean. Isn’t that remarkable? Almost every vessel that enters or exits San Diego Bay, from aircraft carrier to sabot, passes the Tunaman’s Memorial. The monument displays an inscription that was the vision of tunaman, sea captain and historian Mr. ANTHONY MASCARENHAS: “Honoring those that built an industry and remembering those that departed this Harbor in the Sun, and did not return.”
Local resident Ron Machado told me that Mascarenhas worked for years to make the monument a reality. “He had this vision for that monument and he just knew he could make it happen,” Machado said. Tony’s son Michael Mascarenhas, a friend John Rabello and the Portuguese Historical Center helped Tony raise over $100,000 (equivalent to $297,848 today – ed.) to bring the vision to life.
Mr. Tony Mascarenhas was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts (his parents emigrants from Fuseta, Portugal – ed.), and he was a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Michael said the famous statue of the Gloucester Fisherman, known as “The Man at the Wheel” — a memorial to thousands of Gloucester, Massachusetts fishermen who lost their lives to the sea — had made a strong impression on his father when he was young. He believed the tuna industry on the West Coast deserved at least the same attention,” Michael said.
Jeff Madruga told me that Tony’s many contributions to the Portuguese Historical Center were “never anything less than exemplary.” He remembers the elder Mascarenhas as “a masterful and persuasive salesman” who would routinely pull people out of the United Portuguese S.E.S. Hall to show them a model of “The Man at the Wheel” (*Small Note: This is an error – The statuette model in Mr. Mascarenhas’ car truck was always, and only the statuette of the Tunaman’s Memorial Monument as it exists on our Shelter Island. Sorry for the confusion – Jeff Madruga) that he kept in the trunk of his car. “He hoped those two monuments would be bookends to each other,” Madruga recalled.
As early as the 1860s, a small community of Chinese fishermen called Roseville home. They fished from junks they built onshore and dried their catch on racks near what is now the foot of Talbot Street near the San Diego Yacht Club.
Portuguese fishermen began to work the waters of San Diego Bay and Point Loma in the first years of the 20th century (more accurately, a decade or two before 1900 – ed.). They had sailing fishing boats, 20-24 feet long. If you’ve seen the famous “Butcher Boy” at the San Diego Maritime Museum, you have some idea of what those boats looked like. Museum volunteers recently finished a complete and lovingly detailed restoration of “Butcher Boy”, which was built by MANUEL F. MADRUGA and MANUEL GOULART here in 1902.
San Diego’s first tuna cannery, Pacific Tuna Canning Co., opened in 1911, canning albacore seasonally. Eleven canneries were operating in Southern California by 1914, six of them in San Diego. The tuna industry prior to World War I, using bamboo poles with baited lines, was dominated by Japanese fishermen. By 1924, over 400 commercial fishing boats were operating out of San Diego Bay, and the Van Camp Cannery had consolidated four of the smaller ones.
When captain M.O. MEDINA left San Diego with a crew of four to fish for tropical tuna off the coast of Mexico in 1919, “little did they realize at the time that they had created a new fishery for the United States and a new fishing technology and a vessel design that was to be imitated throughout the world,” according to Mr. August Felando, former President of the American Tunaboat Association. Mr. M. O. Medina, a mainstay in Point Loma’s Portuguese community, was later President of the U.P.S.E.S. HALL (União Portuguesa – Sociedade do Espírito Santo – ed.) for 51 years.
The tuna fishing industry was a major part of San Diego’s economy for a half-century, employing at its peak thousands of fishermen and cannery workers. But the industry was plagued by boom-and-bust cycles due to advances in technology, political intervention and the vagaries of tuna migration.
With the U.S. entrance to World War II following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, 49 of San Diego’s largest tuna boats and more than 600 fishermen went into the Navy. Nearly half those boats did not return from the war. The industry suffered some lean years in the early and mid-1950s as cheap, duty-free, frozen Japanese (& Peruvian – ed.) tuna flooded the U.S. market. San Diego’s tuna fleet declined more than 80% during that period, but rebounded significantly in the 1960s (with the adoption of the hydraulic “power block” and purse-seining with nylon nets – ed.).
People who grew up in Roseville’s Portuguese community during that era remember their disappointment when their fathers would put out to sea, and the excitement upon their return. Sisters Christine Xavier Speed and Carolyn Xavier Orcutt recall hiding little surprises for their dad to find after he had left port. “We’d put a tin of Almond Roca in his sea bag,” Carolyn said. “And Baby Ruths,” said Christine. “He had a real sweet tooth.” The girls remembered the excitement of going on watch with their dad aboard his boat at the Embarcadero when he returned to port. “He would always bring something back for us,” Christine recalled. “Maracas!,” said Carolyn. “All Portuguese kids had maracas, and seahorses and llama slippers!” But when the men were gone, the families were left behind in “a community of women and children that we palled around with,” Carolyn said.
Donna Alves-Calhoun remembers going to Shelter Island to watch her father’s boat come into port. “We had a neighbor who was a ham radio operator,” she told me. “He would get in contact with my dad’s boat, the ‘Toro Bravo’, and he would walk over to our house and tell us, ‘Your dad is just two hours out.’ That is such a vivid memory. I was maybe 8 years old. I remember waving and the crew waving back. It was so exciting.”
Ms. Zeca Rodrigues remembers seeing off her brother’s boat at 10th Avenue and then driving to Shelter Island to wave as the boat headed out to sea. “We always stayed there until we couldn’t see the boats anymore,” she recalled. “One time the boat seemed to slow down before it reached Ballast Point, and then it turned around. Right about then we started noticing that somebody was missing. “‘Hey, where’s Eddie?’ people were asking.” *Five-year-old Eddie Costa had stowed away on his Dad’s boat! “We were standing right about here,” Rodrigues said ‘right where the Tunaman’s Memorial stands today’.
The lawn of Shelter Island’s Shoreline Park is an ideal spot for the Tunaman’s Memorial. But did you realize that the monument was almost installed elsewhere? Tony Mascarenhas was working with San Diego Port Director Don Nay in 1981. The Director’s preference was to erect the monument at Embarcadero Marina Park downtown. His second choice was Seaport Village. How fortunate that those locations didn’t pan out, eh?
The Tunaman’s Memorial was dedicated October 26, 1986, a year and a half after Mr. Tony Mascarenhas left this world. The nearly 11,000-pound bronze sculpture is the work of Mr. Franco Vianello, an artist who was himself a commercial fisherman. The sculpture took Vianello a full year to create. The statue’s three fishermen, representing members of the Portuguese, Italian and Japanese fishing communities, have been imbued with a palpable sense of determination. The tips of their bamboo poles reach 21′ above the ground. The Portuguese Historical Center invites the public to the annual Tunaman’s Memorial Service of Remembrance on Sunday, March 17. Mass will begin at 11 a.m. at St. Agnes Catholic Church, 1145 Evergreen St. in Roseville. It will be followed directly by the Service of Remembrance at the Tunaman’s Memorial.
The Xavier sisters said they actually could see their dad’s boat leaving from their house. “Our dad kept homing pigeons,” Carolyn remembered. “He would take those pigeons on board with him either going out on a trip or going to Long Beach to unload. When the boat passed the end of Shelter Island, he would release those pigeons and they would always fly home.”
Mr. Eric DuVall is President of the Ocean Beach Historical Society. Thanks to Ron Machado, Jeff Madruga, Olivia and Blake Martz, Christine Speed, Carolyn Orcutt, Donna Alves-Calhoun and Zeca Rodrigues for their help with this story. Membership in OBHS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $25 annually. Visit obhistory.org.
Editorial Note: The “40 Years” referred to in the Timeline Title to this space refers to the 40-years between when this article was written (2024) and the 1984 closing of the last tuna cannery operation in San Diego. – JLM