SEAL-HUNTING ON THE ICE
If you were to read some of the voyages of the intrepid explorers
of Queen Elizabeth’s day, you would be charmed by their accounts of
wonderful birds, marvellous beasts and fishes, which they met in that
part of the new Western world discovered by John Cabot and his West of
England crews: soles three yards long, huge sea-cows with long white
tusks, seals, bears, and monstrous whales.
Among all these animals and fishes, none is more interesting than the
hair-seal of the North Atlantic. The birth, habits, and migration of
the seal are just as marvellous as any other branch of natural history.
Centuries ago the seals could make their home near the coasts of
Newfoundland, for there were no white men to molest their “ancient,
solitary reign”; but during the last century they have fled before the
gaff of the hunters to the waters far to the north of Labrador.
In the North Atlantic are to be found about six varieties of seals,
the most valuable variety commercially being the harp-seal. The young
harps begin to put on fat from the moment of their birth, so that in
less than a month one of these baby seals will weigh from 25 to 40
pounds. They usually remain on the ice about twenty-five days before
taking to the water, during which time they are fed by their mothers,
who will sometimes travel ten miles in order to furnish their young
with food. One of the most mysterious things, however, is that, even if
the young are not fed by their mothers, they continue to put on fat. It
may be that the old seals select a sheet of ice containing animalculæ,
for the young are often observed to be sucking the ice in the absence
of their mothers.
The hoods, or bladder-nose seals, are also very abundant. They are
much older than the harps when caught, and always congregate to the
north-east of the latter species. The method of despatching the young
hoods is with the gaff, but the old hoods are usually killed with the
gun. The old dog-hood is a valiant fighter for the young. It sometimes
happens that eight or ten men are engaged endeavouring to kill the
old dog-hood with gaffs or clubs. When the bladder is filled, it will
resist any amount of beating on the head, and frequently the hood will
bite off the end of his assailant’s gaff.
With the advent of milder weather at the beginning of the year, great
ice-fields are to be seen in the bays of Newfoundland, and also many
miles out at sea. It is upon these “fields” that the seals bring forth
their young, about the middle of February. And what pretty little
children they are--such bright, pathetic eyes, lovely white coats, and
graceful movements! Their cry resembles that of a new-born babe, and
when a ship is in the midst of them at night, their childlike wailing
is one of the weirdest sounds imaginable.
The sealing fleet which goes out from St. John’s usually comprises
eighteen ships, and they leave port on the 10th or 12th of March.
From start to finish they have to contend with very heavy ice, and
frequently very cold and stormy weather. When the seals are sighted,
which is usually on the east coast of Newfoundland, according to the
direction in which the ice is driven by wind and current, the captain
sends his hunters in various directions over the ice-floe. Sometimes
the hunters will travel six or ten miles from the ship, but the
“lookout” never loses sight of them unless a fog falls and obscures
them from his view.
In the midst of thousands of these baby seals the hunters go forward
with their gaffs, dealing death on every hand. A slight stroke on the
nose is sufficient to despatch them, and in a short time the ice is
one mass of lifeless bodies. The hunter then takes his sharp knife and
“sculps” them, which is removing the pelt from the carcass. This pelt
contains the fur and about two inches of fat. The carcass is left on
the ice to be eaten by birds or fishes.
When the sculping is finished, the pelts are “laced” together, and
towed by a rope to what is known to the hunters as a “pan,” which is
marked by a flag of the ship to which the crew belong. When these are
heaped together under the various flags, the ship steams around and
takes them on board in the same manner that she would take on any cargo.
When the captain thinks that it is impossible to increase the catch,
or when he has sufficient on board, he steams back to St. John’s,
where the pelts are taken out to pass through certain processes before
becoming marketable. The fat is removed from the skin and rendered
into oil, which is very pure and white, and the skins are sent to all
parts of the world to be manufactured into cloaks, capes, and leather.
Sometimes a ship will return with as many as 40,000 pelts, and a good
“harvest” usually reaches a grand total of 350,000. Many years ago, in
the days of sailing-vessels, the catches were much greater, the largest
being in the neighbourhood of 600,000.
The Newfoundland seal-hunter is famous for his daring achievements. He
runs from pan to pan over the loose floating ice, and seems to be quite
unconscious of any impending peril. What a perilous pursuit it is,
too! The hunters never know when some terrible blizzard or blinding
snowstorm may suddenly come driving in from the north, or when a thick
fog may settle down and separate them from their ship. There are
incidents on record where crews have become separated during a fog or
blizzard, and have been driven on a sheet of floating ice, to perish in
the biting cold far out at sea.
Probably the most appalling disaster on record is that which befell the
ship _Greenland_ many years ago. Forty-five of the men were out upon
the ice killing the young seals one night, when a terrific blizzard
suddenly sprang up and cut off their retreat to the ship. When the
blizzard had spent its force, the poor hunters were found lifeless on
the great stretch of snow-covered ice. They were taken by loving hands
from the ice, wrapped in canvas, and placed on deck to be brought back
for interment at St. John’s, the city from which they had set out
only a few weeks before, with buoyant spirits and hopes of a “bumper”
voyage. It was one of the gloomiest days in the history of St. John’s
when the dead bodies of those daring hunters were lifted from the deck
and taken to their last resting-place in the presence of sorrowing
multitudes.