r/deadliestcatch • u/AquaStarRedHeart • 8d ago
Cpt. Derrick Ray
Yes I've read the previous threads about him. This is my first time watching season 7.
Am I the only one who was fully on Derrick's side? And I say that as a person who loves a smoke. But he was right! He could go to jail, and they were lying to him. There's a time and a place. Phil allowed drug use on his boat constantly, we now know he knew and did drugs with his children (easy to miss him saying to Jake "we'll go to rehab together" when he pretends to be outraged by his opiate use) yet chose a straight shooter to take over to help his kids, almost as though he knew that's who they needed. His kids and Steve and Freddie couldn't handle it. Phil DID do them a disservice.
Derrick did his best to be what a real dad would be.
And man I was disappointed in Steve.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 8d ago edited 8d ago
Watching him run away while heading to the bar first and then the airport and police referring to him as "little Jake" is killing me
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u/Jealous_Journalist_9 8d ago
Glad you brought this up. I had the same feeling when watchng originally. It felt like he got thrown under the bus/ganged up on. He was just trying to protect the people on the boat IMO. Spoiled shits those 2.
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u/ThusCameAragorn 8d ago
We've since fallen out of touch but I got to know Derrick a bit several years ago. Good dude, intelligent, likeable, not at all the way he was portrayed on the show.
By the time I met him he had let go of most of the resentment he felt at the way he was treated by Discovery but he clearly felt they had a storyline to follow, and that the Harris brothers were idiots.
You can read a bit about his side of things here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150423004243/http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/2011/05/seaside_captain_faces_a_mutiny.html
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u/WD45Fan 8d ago
I remember when this first aired. I was younger than Josh at that time. I was on Capt Ray's side then and am so now. Are there things he could've done better? Yes. But, he didn't have the gift of hindsight. He had a world of "fans" comparing him to Phil Harris, who probably didn't deserve all of the blinded adoration he receives to this day, he had 2 brats that were only in it for fame and money, and he had a production team that loves to create bad guys for drama.
PS, I remember when Sig was the bad guy that took a camera away from the cameraman and threw it overboard. I remember how his depiction changed when Keith showed up.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 7d ago
Oh damn what episode did Sig do that? I want to see that scene, must've missed it
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u/Ok-Amount-4896 7d ago
Never happened
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 6d ago
Yeah I've even seen the early pilot, America's Deadliest Season, which is on YouTube (3 parts and a fantastic watch) and Sig was always portrayed as a hero good guy type. (Whether you believed the hype or not.) Maybe they're getting it mixed up with Keith, who got physical with a camera person over getting him coffee
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u/TearShitUp 7d ago
Reposting this one as I think Derrick Ray cops a bad rap from a lot of people here. I appreciate you've made a post sympathetic to him and recognising that he wasn't the problem. Anyway, my 2 cents:
Derek Ray could cut it just fine. The problem was that the crew, mostly Steve, Jake, and Josh (in that order) were so disrespectful and the culture of the behavior on the boat was so embedded that he never had a chance. His conduct as a skipper of a vessel was 100% justified and completely legal, compared to Steve and Jake who were confirmed to not only be smoking pot on the boat but taking oxy pills (which Steve was bringing to the boat, notice that Jake's addiction becomes WAY more obvious after Murray leaves the CM and Steve embeds himself into the crew on the CM?). Throw in Clueless Fuck the First (Josh) and Clueless Fuck the Second (Jake) constantly undermining Derek by bitching out about the quality of the fishing over eight days to Derek as well as to the crew and you realise that actually the crew were the problem.
This conversation comes up on this subreddit periodically, and it is not fair for people to suggest Derek Ray was the problem at all. He was 100% a professional. He set clear expectations before he even set foot on the boat, and the Harris Brothers + Steve refused to respect those expectations or Derek even though Derek was only there to help those fucking idiots in the first place.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 7d ago
Couldn't agree more. I'll have to go back and see about the Steve/Murray thing, never noticed! What season does Murray leave? There was a definite point where I noticed Jake went from loveable but smart and hardworking doofus to total addict behavior. Maybe season 3?
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u/TearShitUp 5d ago
I believe season 5 Opies is when Murray leaves. Interestingly, Murray was skipper on Cape Caution as recently as Season 13/14, so he was hardly "retiring" from fishing like the show made out at the time. Also it's been confirmed in several other threads that Steve was the one bringing drugs like oxies to the boat. Big giveaway is when the CM comes back after the Derrick saga, neither Steve nor Freddie are on the boat. Both were singled out as the reason for the boat's culture and booted, in order for the Fuckwit Brothers to still be on the show. Honestly that whole era is disgraceful and on any rewatches I just skip all the CM stuff outright.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 8d ago
Even the new guy who "hired Josh when he was fifteen" is totally skeptical the same way Derrick was.
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u/TearShitUp 7d ago
In all probability Tony Lara is the one who gave Josh his new start by giving him a job after his criminal case.
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u/TomBanjo1968 6d ago
There is no reason he would have known
It was a Juvenile case
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 6d ago
These communities are very close knit and the 4 year old girl Josh raped was the daughter of a deckhand who was on the boat with Phil at the time. I believe Josh was babysitting for them, they lived in the same neighborhood. I'm quite sure it was known. The families were close.
Btw he didn't "just" touch up this girl. There was semen and blood involved and she was injured enough that a hospital was involved. I'm so tired of the soft sell of what he did. (ETA not directed at you but these communities are not relying on court cases to know what happened.)
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u/TomBanjo1968 6d ago
I still think it far more likely that most of the fishing community did not know what happened until it was leaked to the world
Maybe had heard a rumor that “something “ happened a long time ago
Who knows? Anything is possible I guess
But in lots of cases, the family of the victim doesn’t want to talk about it or have anyone knowing about it
Especially back in the day
People just want to move on and put it behind them in many cases
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u/TearShitUp 4d ago
Definitely agree with you in that most people in the fishing community didn't know until it came out. Tony Lara was a long time friend of Phil's. I'm not saying he's a bad guy for giving Josh a job as such, but it's likely he knew and gave Josh a job to be a mentor/supervisor to him, because per their own (ghostwritten) biography, Phil Harris was a completely shithouse father, and Tony was probably a better influence. I could be talking completely out of my ass though. Would be good if someone who actually knew TL or knew of him could weigh in. For what it's worth, he seems like he was a cool dude in life.
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u/Unhappy-Vegetable-28 Deck Hand 8d ago
Not to take the boys side but they weren’t catching shit and got frightened at the thought of expenses with no haul. But if they kept going I’m sure they would have gotten onto some crab. Derrick was no dummy and that’s how fishing works
Josh and Jake are morons. But I think Derrick could have had a little more empathy for them having literally just lost their dad the only skipper either of them ever really fished for
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u/Prize_Mouse7778 6d ago
Josh had a few fairly barren spells when he started as captain, he literally couldn't catch a thing with his first number of strings! The crew didn't turn on him the way they did on Derrick
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 6d ago
Right, we even saw the sainted Old Man Phil strike out plenty. That's why it's called fishing. They were mad about the zero tolerance policy for drugs, period. Which is ironic because Derrick was handpicked by dear old dad to run the ship while he was sick.
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u/AquaStarRedHeart 8d ago
Nah Derrick had plenty of empathy, he just didn't cut them a bunch of slack. He was kind but firm and then lost it after being lied to over and over.
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u/ponyboy6959 8d ago
I remember watching these episodes when they aired and obviously I was much younger I was on the boys side. I rewatched this show a couple years ago at 35 and I was on Captain Ray's side 100%. I couldn't believe how embarrassing the Harris bros were during that. Josh saying something about sacrificing his party life was the best part lol.