'Flapjaws' Was A Fixture In Montauk

For the last 50-odd years, very few people in Montauk knew who Joseph O’Connor was. But everyone knew “Flapjaws.”

From the decks of boats to the stools of bars, Flapjaws — also “Joey Flapjaws” or, to those closest to him, just “Flappy” — was long one of the most memorable characters in a town once filled with memorable characters. He was renowned for his telling of tales — some true, some tall, but all told with an infectious relish that endeared him to anyone listening — his long prayers over the radio while at sea, his cherubic smile and his Santa Claus beard.

When he died last week at the age of 76, of heart disease at the Hamptons Center nursing home in Southampton, many friends marveled that Flappy had endured as long as he had for all the abuses he subjected himself to over a long life in Montauk and at sea. All said their own lives were fuller for having known him and will be more empty with him gone.

“We go back many, many years — he worked for my father, he worked for me, he worked for my son Steven Sr. and he worked for my grandson, Steven Jr. So he worked for four generations of Vikings,” said Captain Paul Forsberg, the patriarch of the Viking Fleet family, from his home in Florida. “He was a great boatman, a great shipmate, a great mate on deck — he always held an audience with his stories and jokes —and he wasn’t afraid to work.”

Friends who baited hooks and tipped glasses with Mr. O’Connor will hold a floating memorial for him on Wednesday, March 10, aboard one of the Viking Fleet’s boats and will scatter his ashes in Montauk Harbor.

“I met Joey back in the 1960s when I was only 14 or 15 years old, and I would walk from town to the docks with him before I had a driver’s license, and he would talk and talk and talk and talk,” Henry Uihlein recalled. “He was educated and he had the gift of gab. He was an ordained minister and grew up in a monastery with monks. At least, that’s what he told me. I know he did give a sermon at my church.”

As Mr. Uihlein shyly suspected, Flapjaws did not, in fact, grow up in a monastery and was not actually ordained. He did go through seminary training and had been preparing to becoming a priest, according to his nephew, Brian O’Connor, so his self-ordainment did not come without some understanding for the role.

Joseph O’Connor was born in Manhattan, the day before D-Day, the third child of Denis and Euphelia O’Connor. He is survived by a sister, Maureen, and his nephew Brian and family. He was predeceased by his brothers, Denis and John.

Mr. O’Connor attended Catholic boarding school near New York City and then seminary. But he gave up on the priesthood and joined the Army as the Vietnam War raged, his nephew said. Flapjaws was fond of telling stories of being wounded in combat to explain his limp — though the veracity of the tales is uncertain and there is another telling of a motorcycle crash on a military base in New Jersey. Regardless of how and where, he left the Army with an honorable discharge and a bad leg. A short time later, he arrived at the rails of Montauk’s fishing fleet.

“Everybody loved him right away,” said Captain Jay Burke, who worked with Flapjaws on his first mating gig in Montauk in the 1960s aboard Lester and John Behan’s headboat, Peconic Queen. “He was a philosopher, a poet, a comedian and an all-around fun guy.”

Despite the limitations of his bum leg, Flapjaws carved out a respected niche among mates in the harbor, working on all of the top headboats catering to tourists in summer and various commercial fishing ventures in the winter. Captains remembered him as an interminably upbeat soul, even when things were tough.

“We were tile fishing on the Viking Star back in the 1970s, tub trawling before long lining was invented, and they were up on the bow and it was freezing cold and rough and the seas were coming over the bow and they were frozen and soaked and Floppy — I call him Floppy — was up there rooting them all on, shouting, ‘What do you think this is, a Caribbean cruise?’ That’s what he was like. He found humor in everything.”

Between stints on the Viking boats, Mr. O’Connor worked the deck of the Flying Cloud for Captain Fred Bird, who became his closest friend and confidant. He also worked as a mate for the renowned “shark hunter” Captain Frank Mundus, harpooned swordfish off Cape Cod and sailed for weeks at a time with Capt. Forsberg aboard his long-range sailboat Viking Freedom.

“He knew how to do everything,” Brian O’Connor said. “There are a million stories from people who he taught things that they are still doing today.”

All off his friends said that the passing of Capt. Bird, in 2013, was a loss that Flapjaws never overcame and a sorrow he increasingly sought to drown on a barstool. His final two years were spent in the Southampton nursing home in quickly failing health.

“My heart hurts for Joey,” Mr. Uihlein lamented. “He didn’t have an easy life at the end. I will miss him. I liked him, I really liked him.”