Fish story

Ruthie B sets sail for the Rhode Island International Film Festival

by Johnette Rodriguez

The documentary called Ruthie B, Ruthie B, which premiers in Rhode Island this Sunday at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, is named after Nantucket fisherman Bill Blount's boat, the Ruthie B, and, as with many such boats, she is named after Bill's wife, the real Ruthie B, Ruth Blount. This quite ordinary lineage, however, becomes extraordinarily pertinent to the story that is told in the film, the story of the last fishing family on Nantucket: their struggles to stay afloat financially, Bill's determination to pursue a career that gives him satisfaction if not monetary rewards, Ruth's worries over being in debt, and her efforts to contribute to the family's income.

Director and executive producer Sandy Spencer, who himself grew up in a fishing village near Cornwall, England, saw a good tale in a newspaper article about the Blounts two summers ago while he was visiting Nantucket. And as any documentary filmmaker quickly discovers, Spencer found that there were multiple stories behind the main narrative. One of them concerned Bill's father, the legendary Luther Blount, who over the past 50 years has built an ever-expanding shipyard industry in Warren, Rhode Island (he is interviewed at Blount Marine in the film).

Before moving to Nantucket 25 years ago with Ruth, Bill built his first dragger at his father's yard in 1970 -- Blount senior was an innovator in his field, creating an efficient back-dragger for East Coast fishermen in the '50s -- and Bill gained his love of fishing from swordfishing with his father at seven and being set out alone in a dory at 13 to hand-harpoon the fish and lash it to his boat. Nonetheless, Bill says in the film that his father has never said anything good about what he is doing with his life, and, accordingly, would not help financially when Bill's boat was crippled, and he and Ruth faced one of the most difficult times of their lives.

"Then Ruth burst upon the scene," recalls Spencer, about the documentary process. "It was the age-old story of the man not communicating by going 200 miles out to sea, not even phoning in during the hurricane. And she was living in a community where she wouldn't look at the newspaper or open the mail because she was embarrassed and terrified to see their names listed as tax delinquents."

Spencer's first overview of his film was the irony of a family in dire economic straits pursuing a life that forms the historic basis for Nantucket's charm, the nautical image of the island that is pumped up to attract tourists-now Nantucket's biggest industry. Many of these visitors build wealthy "trophy homes" and spend up to $500,000 for membership in one of Nantucket's exclusive country clubs.

But Spencer was so impressed with the Blounts' values, as was co-producer and story editor Celia Strause, also a summer resident on Nantucket, that the film's focus tightened on the family and specifically on Ruth.

"The emotional core of the film was not just the relationship of Bill with the sea but of Bill with Ruth," Strause remembers. "Ruth became an increasingly compelling and compassionate voice."

Spencer and Strause were impressed by the Blounts' integrity, including Bill's refusal to cheat on any of the fishing regulations, however arbitrary he might consider them to be; by their generosity to them as strangers filming their lives; by their ability to find resources for their family; and, in Strause's words, "their ability to find joy in their lives and not be in the slightest bit resentful of what has become in many people's eyes an island of very wealthy vacationers."

Ruth's response to that is that she and Bill are both strong Christians, with "a lot of blessings in our lives that have nothing to do with money."

"I don't like the pressure of debt," Ruth elaborates, "but the things that make you content and happy in life we have-family, friends, food. Bill is really gifted; he's a country gatherer. He hunts, he fishes, he barters. When he goes out for a walk, he doesn't just see the trees, he sees the wild asparagus. We have an abundance of food."

As for the wealthy islanders, many of whom have become customers for Ruth's cottage industry of sewing drapes and upholstery, she's seen enough to know that their money "does not bring them happiness. It might bring them some fun, but sometimes the more you have, the less you appreciate."

What both Ruth and Bill gained from opening their lives to these filmmakers was a better understanding of each other. Ruth was astounded and very validated when she read a study of fishermen's wives conducted and written by University of Rhode Island professor Helen Mederer, who is quoted in the film. Ruth had had no idea that the issues she faced were shared by other fishing families.

After the first decade of their marriage, when she missed him terribly, Ruth adjusted to Bill being out to sea, and what seemed normal to her seemed unusual to her friends. She often had to make decisions on her own about the children (seven of them, aged 8 to 25), about financial crises, about household management.

"The film has been life-changing for Bill and me," Ruth stresses. "I came to understand how deep his love of the sea is, and he saw that my struggles were also there. We got into each other's shoes, and that was invaluable for each of us and our relationship and our family."

For his part, Bill could now see how different fishing families are from regular families -- "in how the politics run, how the decisions get made" -- and it helped him work on old patterns that had created stress in the relationship. He also recognized a common thread among his fellow fishermen: "Fishermen have a tendency to see themselves not as men who earn money but that their identity and manhood is tied up with fishing."

That makes the ever-changing government regulations, many of them spurred on by environmentalists, particularly hard to take for fishermen like Bill Blount: "All fishermen are currently viewed as evil. We're not all perverts and pirates, and we've been vilified. They talk about us destroying the ocean bottom, and there's seaweed growing there that wasn't growing 10 years ago. I'm all for conservation, but there are fish that could be harvested, and when you go away from a management concept to a pristine image . . . nature goes on binges. It's not the perfect thing that the environmentalists want it to be."

Ruthie B, Ruthie B tackles these difficult issues as well, interviewing Joe DeAlteris, from the URI Department of Fisheries; "Carlos," from the New Bedford docks, who has found himself on the wrong side of the law many a time; a Greenpeace official who admits herself what difficulties the regulations impose on the fishing industry.

The final drama of the 45-minute film occurs when the Ruthie B's two engines break down, and Bill and Ruth are worried about whether they will make it. But, off-camera, post-filming, they stuck it out, got the boat back in the water and Bill diversified the fish he was catching, with a very good price for monkfish giving him the boost he needed to keep going. They both feel that they are in a much better place than they were in the film, that it's been a much healthier year for them.

Standing outside the second screening of the film at the Nantucket Film Festival in June, Ruth confessed that she had been feeling very anxious and very vulnerable about people seeing it: "I was standing with my soul wide open to anyone, to the world. I'm a very private person, and right afterward, I wondered if I'd done the right thing." But in the intervening weeks, she's had many people on the island tell her how much the film meant to them, and she's made her peace with it: "I like to think it would touch someone, and that fishing wives will see it and feel understood."

In its universal messages of a man pursuing the dream in his heart against all odds, of a wife who supports her husband in that dream (like the Biblical Ruth) and of two people forging a life together for themselves and their family, Ruthie B, Ruthie B will undoubtedly speak to many more people than just fishing families.

Ruthie B, Ruthie B will be shown on Sunday, August 13 at 10:30 a.m. at the Columbus.

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