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NARRAGANSETT -- On warm summer days, smells and sounds clash along the oil-stained streets of Galilee.
The rich sweet scent of fried seafood mixes with the acrid odor of rotting fish; the squawks of the seagulls punctuate the deep baritones of foghorns.
Pickup trucks and tractor-trailers clank along, hauling catches out of the village and supplies into the bait shops, fish wholesalers and boat mechanics that help keep the local fishing fleet, one of the country's sturdiest, afloat.
Tourists lap the tiny village in a frustrated search for free parking. Hundreds of other cars already soak up the sun in the pay lots as their passengers crowd onto the Block Island Ferry.
Visitors line the breakwater, casting off the rocks and waving to the boats as they pass in and out of Point Judith Pond. And on the creaky wooden deck of George's of Galilee, business, as always, is booming.
Richard Durfee watches the action from outside his wind-whipped, gray-shingled restaurant, which his family has owned for going on six decades.
"Tourism has always been here, and fishing has always been here, and they've always gotten along. It's what makes Galilee very special and very strong," says Durfee, 63.
"Galilee is special -- it's probably the best economic use, per square inch, of any community I've ever seen. It works, and it works well."
AND SO it has. But a series of plans, some under way, others just abstractions, has the fishermen nervous about the future of the port and their role in it.
In the face of growing regulation, soaring insurance and declining catches, their industry appears increasingly vulnerable, particularly given the rising value of waterfront property.
These men -- for they are mostly men, and, in many cases, the sons and grandsons of those who turned this sliver of land into an engine of the local economy -- fear that efforts to encourage tourism will alter the character of Galilee, much as vacationers and tourists redefined once-vibrant fishing communities such as Newport, Provincetown and Kennebunkport.
It matters because there aren't many places like it left. Galilee is the last self-sufficient fishing community in Rhode Island and one of a dwindling few in New England, along with New Bedford, Gloucester and Portland.
Sure, there are other places where fishermen dock boats, drop nets, or unload catches, but with ice venders, fish processors and boat mechanics, Galilee has everything it needs to bring fish, mollusk and crustacean from sea to plate.
In 2003 Galilee ranked as the 16th most productive fishing port in the nation, hauling in 44 million pounds of fish worth about $32.4 million.
DURFEE IS an unlikely harbinger of change.
In 1948, George's was small and friendly, with coffee sitting on a pot-bellied stove and a dining room full of fishermen. While his parents ran the restaurant, six-year-old Richard Durfee would patrol the docks delivering coffee and doughnuts to the fishermen before heading to school.
Once, Durfee's father slept in; when he arrived at the restaurant, it was already open -- warm and full of customers who had taken the liberty of making themselves breakfast.
Over the years the port grew -- and George's grew with it. The restaurant became one of Narragansett's largest employers and Galilee's mini-chamber of commerce, fielding phone calls about the weather and ferry schedules.
As the restaurant was handed from father to son, the customer base began to shift. One day Richard Durfee stopped opening the restaurant early enough for fishermen to grab a cup of coffee before work.
Durfee and his family also own property around their restaurant -- including a crafts shop and a candy shop -- making them the largest private landowner in Galilee.
Just east of the restaurant, where four cottages (shacks really) once stood, four large beach houses are under construction, each being marketed at $1.75 million to $2.25 million. Each house includes a fourth-story cupola, which a spokesman for the project says is a good place to sip martinis.
"This is going to be a New York, Connecticut market," Ned Caswell said. "These will be beach cottages. These will be second homes."
In addition, the gated Village at Sand Hill Cove will include a strip of street-front businesses topped with two stories of condominiums. Durfee also plans to rebuild George's at its current location in a modern building topped with more apartments.
T. Brian Handrigan, a longtime Town Council member and owner of Champlin's Fish Market, has similar plans. Last December Handrigan purchased the 1.4-acre parking lot across the street from the Durfee development for just under $1 million.
He wants to replace the cars and trailers that fill the lot in the summer with new commercial space and condominiums.
"People complain about the parking lot . . . , about all the trailers; they want to see it gone, but what do they want in its place?" says Handrigan, shaking his head with frustration.
"If things are kept the way they are, a quaint fishing village, what does that mean?"
Outsiders have taken an interest in the community too. Paolino Properties -- owned by Joseph R. Paolino Jr., a developer and former mayor of Providence, and his father -- recently purchased the long-struggling Lighthouse Inn, which they renovated and reopened in time for summer.
Paolino says he is planning additional renovations on the 100-room hotel, the only one in the port. Another Providence man, Sean Mahoney, who owns the upscale bar and dessert cafe, L'Elizabeth, in Providence, just purchased Finbacks, a rough-and-tumble watering hole and fishermen's hangout.
He says fishermen are still welcome, so long as they adhere to his new policy -- no swearing at the bar.
But not all property owners are interested in change. Joseph Pearce, owner of Galilee Parking and the second-largest landowner in Galilee says he has no interest in developing his 4.1 acres. Pearce is content collecting $10 bills for day parking on the property, which is also home to a handful of rickety summer cottages.
"I like things the way they are in Galilee."
Clarkson A. Collins, who recently retired as Narragansett's director of community development after 20 years, says Galilee could be at a turning point.
"It has been a very functional port, which is exactly what the fishing industry needs and wants, but on the other hand the area around it really hasn't reached its potential. There's no real invitation there to go and enjoy the area.
"But it will be a change. People will probably remember with fondness the sort of funky atmosphere that's there now.'
GALILEE WAS born gritty -- a tough, inaccessible home to a handful of fishermen, trappers and farmers with few modern conveniences and hardly any women.
"Life is both simple and luxurious in Galilee," opines a Journal article from 1930. "The lobster can be had each spring. The fish can always be counted on to swim into the nets. Nobody has to try and look snappier sartorially than anyone else, and no one tries to look snappy at all."
What sets Galilee apart is its location, at the northern end of the range for squid, scup and butterfish, and at the southern end for cold-water species such as lobster, whiting and winter flounder.
Unlike some other ports elsewhere on the coast, bound to the fortunes of a single species, Galilee fishermen benefit from diverse catches, making them one of the most flexible fleets in the nation, able to target different catches according to supply and demand.
The groundwork for the port was laid in 1890, when the federal government began a 20-year project to create the Point Judith Harbor of Refuge, which used manmade rock jetties to calm the rough Atlantic.
Large-scale development in Galilee didn't occur until 1935, when the state dredged a 35-acre anchorage basin in Point Judith Pond and erected piers allowing vessels to dock in its protected waters. By then annual landings had increased to about 3,000 tons, up from just 300 at the turn of the century. (Within the year fishermen were already complaining that the place was being ruined by tourists.)
Galilee began to acquire its modern flavor in the 1970s. Fishermen were hauling in 60 million pounds of fish annually at the start of the decade. And with new regulations limiting foreign access to the fishing grounds used by Rhode Island's fishing fleet, Galilee was poised to take off as one of the most important fishing ports in the country.
The state was eager to encourage that development, restricting use of the state piers to commercial fishermen, despite the outcry of pleasure boat owners.
By 1974, the catch had risen to 77.1 million pounds.
Others argued that -- regardless of the productivity of the fishing industry -- more effort and energy needed to be invested to attract tourism. A 100-room hotel, the Dutch Inn, opened off the revamped Escape Road, and calls were made for the development of year-round housing to balance the economy.
Tourism proponents argued that Galilee needed to do more to capitalize on its ferry connection to Block Island, now one of the top tourist draws in the state. Visitors tended to park their cars in the port's 3,800 parking spaces (roughly 12 acres' worth) and head straight for the ferry. A 1997 study estimated that each Block Island visitor spent an average of $6 in Galilee and $87 on Block Island.
In 1997, the state announced a range of plans to turn Galilee into a center of tourism at a cost of $21.8 million to $65.7 million. Then-Gov. Lincoln Almond lobbied to pass control of the port from the Department of Environmental Management to the Economic Development Corporation, which wanted to build a second hotel, retail shops and restaurants and, possibly, an aquarium.
Almond shared his vision for the port in 1998: "I want to see a Galilee with scores of tourists, visitors and residents alike strolling the streets, shopping at boutiques and dining in fine restaurants. I want to see a Galilee with a new upscale hotel."
THE PROPOSAL proved incendiary in Galilee.
Some critics mocked the EDC's recommendation for building a second hotel at a time when the first, a seasonal operation, was struggling to stay afloat and the owner was seeking approval to raze the structure and turn the property into a large parking lot.
Others said, waterfront view or not, Galilee can be a grim place: dirty, smelly and dangerous.
"A lot of people are attracted to the working waterfront because they think it's quaint," says Madeleine Hall-Arber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Marine Social Sciences, who has studied the gentrification of New England fishing ports for MIT's Sea Grant program.
"But suddenly if they move there and the boats start up at 4 in the morning and they start to notice the noise and the diesel fumes and all the activity, it's not so quaint."
A recent MIT report concluded that a growing coastal population, combined with increasing regulatory and financial pressures on the fishing industry, was accelerating the gentrification, threatening the fishing industry and culture that have long dominated the New England fishing communities.
The report points squarely at Provincetown and the trendy Cape Cod town's evolution from a "thriving fishing village" to a "summer art colony with a tourist shop and restaurant center that attracts thousands of weekend and summer visitors."
But in Galilee in 2002, the fishermen won. The Town Council passed a watered-down plan that encouraged tourist-related development, but kept control of the port squarely in the hands of DEM and the fishing industry.
"This was passed . . . and we really haven't seen any response up until a couple of months ago," said Collins.
"I was curious that nothing did happen. I thought we had provided a plan to bring some investment into the port."
RODMAN SYKES, a lean, serious man with rough hands and a neat mustache, is a fisherman from a family of fishermen.
Sykes' earliest memories are of visiting his grandfather, Joseph Whaley, at his small summer cottage where George's now stands. "It's a place I grew up, and it's going to change," said Sykes, 53, whose boat, the Deborah Lee, is one of the handful of wooden draggers remaining in the port.
"Nobody begrudges the Durfees," he says. "This is the way things happen in the world. It's progress. It's what's happening all over in the coastal communities. The people with money will eventually have it all, which is the way it works."
Sykes shakes his head.
Several years ago, Sykes and his mother compiled a collection of photos of the village dating back to the turn of the century. While the village pictured is clearly smaller, the faded sepia tones of the photos also suggest that the sights, smells and sounds would be much as they are today.
Most striking, perhaps, is the little cluster of shacks. The Red Arrow Cottages look the same today as they did then, a small patch of dirt dotted with seven shacks. Piles of fishing gear and tattered green nets sit in piles.
Sykes, who coowns the property with several friends, pushes open the door to one of the small buildings. Inside is a small wood bar where Sykes and his friends gather to socialize and watch sports. His uncle was one of the first members of the club, really just a gathering place for friends. The walls are pasted with photos of friends, fish and, increasingly, a few obituaries.
Leaning on the bar, Sykes says Galilee has changed in less visible ways. The social networks that kept fishermen tight, facilitated by a fishermen's co-op viewed by many as one of the best in the country, have eroded. The co-op has closed.
Fishermen, he says, have become businessmen, who leave the place of their work at the end of the day rather than lingering in the port for a meal or a beer. Young people are increasingly reluctant to join a profession among the most arduous, dangerous and thankless in the industrialized world.
TO SYKES, the development projects, the talk of building tourism, the sight of million-dollar houses are painful blows to a hurting industry and an old port that's already losing its character.
Maybe, he worries, Galilee's fishing industry isn't safe. Maybe the owners of the expensive summer homes will be repulsed by the smell of processed squid and try to do something about it. Maybe if catches keep dwindling (it's been a slow summer after all) and regulations, insurance and fuel costs continue to chip away profits, the state will start rethinking its old promises.
So it scares him to hear Kevin Durfee, son of Richard, talk about his vision of the village.
Durfee, 36, who has been overseeing the Sand Hill Cove development project, says DEM and the state should get out of Galilee, sell the land and let the market decide the future of the port.
Sykes says he knows he could make a good bit of money selling his property. But he won't.
"We're going to try to keep it as long as we can," he says. "We have no interest in selling. It's one last little piece of Galilee."
