Fisherman's Wharf and the Sicilian Fleet
Near Monterey, California
Old Fisherman's Wharf reaches out into the harbor where Monterey's fishing fortunes were made. A wharf first rose here in the eighteen forties when the merchant Thomas Larkin grew tired of getting his feet wet unloading cargo, and the present pier dates to eighteen seventy. But the wharf's soul is Sicilian.
Beginning in the eighteen nineties, fishermen from small Sicilian islands crossed the world to Monterey, and by nineteen fourteen nearly four thousand had settled here, one of the fastest community migrations in California history. Their leader was Pietro Ferrante, born on the island of Isola delle Femmine, who arrived around nineteen oh three. In nineteen oh six he introduced the lampara net from the old country, a design that scooped up sardines as no local net could.
Sardine production exploded from a few hundred cases a year to nearly two million within a dozen years, and the boom that built Cannery Row was underway. The Sicilians brought their faith too. In nineteen thirty three they founded the festival of Santa Rosalia, their patron saint, and every year a procession still winds down to the water to bless the fishing fleet.
