A Brief Fisherman’s Chronology

1899

July 21. Born in Oak Park, Illinois.

1900

Family buys “Windemere” on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan, and EH begins to spend summers there for his entire childhood. Here EH learns to fish and shoot, chiefly under the influence of his father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway. The family still owns the property.

1903

Joins a local nature-study group started by his father, the Agassiz Club.

1916

June 10–21. Takes a steamer from Chicago to Onekama, Michigan, with Lewis Clarahan, and hikes to Petoskey—camping, fishing the Bear, the Manistee, the Boardman. There are good accounts of this in both Baker’s biography and Johnson’s articles (see Bibliography).

1919

September. Trip to Fox River, near Seney, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with Jock Pentecost and Al Walker. (See letter to Howell Jenkins dated September 15, 1919.)

1924

First trip to Irati River in Pyrenées, with Hadley Hemingway, the Birds, and the McAlmons. Writes “Big Two-Hearted River” in Paris.

1925

Returns to Irati River, now ruined by loggers. EH writes: “Fish killed, pools destroyed, dams broken.”

1928

First visit to Key West, Florida. EH fishes on wharves and bridges, then boats, for a great variety of saltwater fish.

1930

First visit to Nordquist Ranch in Wyoming. Fishes Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone with great pleasure. Returns frequently until 1939.

1932

May. Fishes for marlin for first time. First visit to Cuba.

1933

Arnold Gingrich invites EH to write personal essays for Esquire.

1934

Buys the Pilar for $7,500, with money advanced by Gingrich; boat is diesel-powered 38-footer, from Wheeler Shipyard in Brooklyn, delivered FOB Miami. It has outriggers and can fish four rods.

1935

April. First trip to Bimini. Sees tuna and marlin attacked by sharks. Shoots himself in both legs with Colt pistol while firing at a shark. In May, EH catches first two tuna—350, 400 pounds—caught off Bimini.

1936

“On the Blue Water”—Esquire article includes story of a large fish caught by a commercial fisherman after a struggle lasting two days and nights, only to have the fish destroyed by sharks because it was too big to get into the boat.

1939

First visit to Sun Valley. Michael Lerner founds International Game Fish Association.

1940

December 28. EH buys La Finca Vigia, near Havana, Cuba.

1952

Publication of the novella The Old Man and the Sea, first in Life magazine, then as a book. Wins Pulitzer Prize.

1955

Wins Nobel Prize. In his acceptance speech, in absentia, he says: “It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”

1955

August. Fishing out of Cojimar, Cuba, for marlin—to be used in footage for the movie of The Old Man and the Sea.

1956

Fishes for a month in Capo Blanco, Peru, for marlin footage for the movie.

1961

Health deteriorates and, on July 2, death in Idaho.