THE SEAL FISHERY
Returning South in the fall of 1895, business necessitated my
remaining for some time in St. John's, where as previously the
Governor, Sir Terence O'Brien, very kindly entertained me. It proved
to be a most exciting time. There were only two banks in the Colony,
called respectively the Union and the Commercial. These issued all the
notes used in the country and except for the savings bank had all the
deposits of the fishermen and people. Suddenly one day I was told,
though with extreme secrecy, that the two banks were unsound and would
not again open after Monday morning. This was early on Saturday.
Business went on as usual, but among the leaders of the country
consternation was beginning to spread. The banks closed at their usual
hour--three o 'clock on Saturday, and so far as I knew no one profited
by the secret knowledge, though later accusations were made against
some people. The serious nature of the impending disaster never really
dawned on me, not being either personally concerned in either bank or
having any experience of finance. When the collection came around at
the cathedral on Sunday my friend whispered to me, "That silver will
be valuable to-morrow." It so happened that on Sunday I was dining
with the Prime Minister, who had befriended all our efforts, and his
tremendously serious view of the position of the Colony sent me to bed
full of alarms for my new friends. We were to have sailed for England
next day and I went down after breakfast to buy my ticket. The agent
sold it, but remarked, "I am not sure if Newfoundland money is good
any longer. It is a speculation selling you this ticket." Before we
sailed the vessel was held up by the Government, as only a few of the
ships were taking notes at face value. Those of the Commercial Bank
were only fetching twenty cents. Besides the banks quite a number of
commercial firms also closed. The directors of the banks were all
local merchants, and many were heavily indebted to them for supplies
given out to their "planters," as they call the fishermen whom they
supply with goods in advance to catch fish for them. It was a sorry
mix-up, and business was very difficult to carry on because we had no
medium of exchange. Even the Governor to pay his gardener had to give
I.O.U. orders on shops--there simply being no currency available.
Matters have long since adjusted themselves, though neither bank ever
reopened. Larger banks of good standing came in from Canada, and no
one can find anything of which to complain in the financial affairs of
the "oldest Colony," even in these days of war.
Newfoundland has a large seal as well as cod fishery. The great
sealing captains are all aristocrats of the fishermen and certainly
are an unusually fine set of men. The work calls for peculiar training
in the hardest of schools, for great self-reliance and resource,
besides skill in handling men and ships. In those days the doyen of
the fleet was Captain Samuel Blandford. He fired me with tales of the
hardships to be encountered and the opportunities and needs for a
doctor among three hundred men hundreds of miles from anywhere. The
result was a decision to return early from my lecture tour and go out
with the seal hunters of the good ship Neptune.
I look back on this as one of the great treats of my life; though I
believe it to be an industry seriously detrimental to the welfare of
the people of the Colony and the outside world. For no mammal bringing
forth but one young a year can stand, when their young are just born
and are entirely helpless, being attacked by huge steel-protected
steamers carrying hundreds of men with modern rifles or even clubs.
Advantage is also taken of the maternal instinct to get the mothers as
well as the young "fat," if the latter is not obtainable in sufficient
quantities. Meanwhile the poor scattered people of the northern shores
of Newfoundland are being absolutely ruined and driven out. They need
the seals for clothing, boots, fresh food, and fats. They use every
portion of the few animals which each catches, while the big steamers
lose thousands which they have killed, by not carrying them at once to
the ship and leaving them in piles to be picked up later. Moreover, in
the latter case all the good proteid food of their carcasses is left
to the sharks and gulls.
At twelve o'clock of March 10, 1896, the good ship Neptune hauled out
into the stream at St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland, preparatory to
weighing anchor for the seal fishery. The law allows no vessels to
sail before 2 P.M. on that day, under a penalty of four thousand
dollars fine--nor may any seals be killed from the steamers until
March 14, and at no time on Sundays. The whole city of St. John's
seemed to be engrossed in the one absorbing topic of the seal fishery.
It meant if successful some fifty thousand pounds sterling at least to
the Colony--it meant bread for thousands of people--it meant for days
and even weeks past that men from far-away outports had been slowly
collecting at the capital, till the main street was peopled all day
with anxious-looking crowds, and all the wharves where there was any
chance of a "berth" to the ice were fairly in a state of siege.
Now let us go down to the dock and visit the ship before she starts.
She is a large barque-rigged vessel, with auxiliary steam, or rather
one should say a steamer with auxiliary sails. The first point that
strikes one is her massive build, her veritable bulldog look as she
sits on the water. Her sides are some eighteen inches thick, and
sheathed and resheathed with "greenheart" to help her in battering the
ice. Inside she is ceiled with English oak and beech, so that her
portholes look like the arrow slits of the windows of an old feudal
castle. Her bow is double-stemmed--shot with a broad band of iron, and
the space of some seventeen feet between the two stems solid with the
choicest hardwoods. Below decks every corner is adapted to some use.
There are bags of flour, hard bread, and food for the crew of three
hundred and twenty men; five hundred tons of coal for the hungry
engine in her battle with the ice-floe. The vessel carries only about
eighteen hundred gallons of water and the men use five hundred in a
day. This, however, is of little consequence, for a party each day
brings back plenty of ice, which is excellent drinking after being
boiled. This ice is of very different qualities. Now it is "slob"
mixed with snow born on the Newfoundland coast. This is called "dirty
ice" by the sealers. Even it at times packs very thick and is hard to
get through. Then there is the clearer, heavy Arctic ice with here and
there huge icebergs frozen in; and again the smoother, whiter variety
known as "whelping ice"--that is, the Arctic shore ice, born probably
in Labrador, on which the seals give birth to their pups.
The masters of watches are also called "scunners"--they go up night
and day in the forebarrel to "scun" the ship--that is, to find the
way or leads through the ice. This word comes from "con" of the
conning tower on a man-of-war.
When the morning of the 10th arrives, all is excitement. Fortunately
this year a southwest wind had blown the ice a mile or so offshore.
Now all the men are on board. The vessels are in the stream. The flags
are up; the whistles are blowing. The hour of two approaches at last,
and a loud cheering, renewed again and again, intimates that the first
vessel is off, and the S.S. Aurora comes up the harbour. Cheers from
the ships, the wharves, and the town answer her whistle, and closely
followed by the S.S. Neptune and S.S. Windsor, she gallantly goes out,
the leader of the sealing fleet for the year.
There have been two or three great disasters at the seal fishery,
where numbers of men astray from their vessels in heavy snow blizzards
on the ice have perished miserably. Sixteen fishermen were once out
hunting for seals on the frozen ice of Trinity Bay when the wind
changed and drove the ice offshore. When night came on they realized
their terrible position and that, with a gale of wind blowing, they
could not hope to reach land in their small boats. Nothing but an
awful death stared them in the face, for in order to hunt over the ice
men must be lightly clad, so as to run and jump from piece to piece.
Without fire, without food, without sufficient clothing, exposed to
the pitiless storm on the frozen sea, they endured thirty-six hours
without losing a life. Finally, they dragged their boats ten miles
over the ice to the land, where they arrived at last more dead than
alive.
It is the physical excitement of travelling over broken loose ice on
the bosom of the mighty ocean, and the skill and athletic qualities
which the work demands, that makes one love the voyage. Jumping from
the side of the ship as she goes along, skurrying and leaping from
ice-pan to ice-pan, and then having killed, "sculped," and "pelted"
the seal, the exciting return to the vessel! But it has its tragic
side, for it takes its regular tribute of fine human life.
A Mr. Thomas Green, of Greenspond, while a boy, with his father and
another man and a 'prentice lad, was tending his seal nets when a
"dwey" or snowstorm came on, and the boat became unmanageable and
drifted off to sea. They struck a small island, but drifted off again.
That night the father and the 'prentice lad died, and next morning the
other man also. The son dressed himself in all the clothes of the
other three, whose bodies he kept in the boat. He ate the flesh of an
old harp seal they had caught in their net. On the third day by
wonderful luck he gaffed an old seal in the slob ice. This he hauled
in and drank the warm blood. On the fifth day he killed a white-coat,
and thinking that he saw a ship he walked five miles over the floe,
leaving his boat behind. The phantom ship proved to be an island of
ice, and in the night he had to tramp back to his open punt. On the
seventh day he was really beginning to give up hope when a vessel, the
Flora, suddenly hove in sight. He shouted loudly as it was dark,
whereupon she immediately tacked as if to leave him. Again he shouted,
"For God's sake, don't leave me with my dead father here!" The words
were plainly heard on board, and the vessel hove to. The watch had
thought that his previous shouting was of supernatural origin. He and
his boat with its pitiful load were picked up and sent back home by a
passing vessel.
On this particular voyage we were lucky enough to come early into the
seals. From the Conner's barrel, in which I spent a great deal of
time, we saw one morning black dots spread away in thousands all over
the ice-floes through which we were butting, ramming, and fighting our
way. All hands were over the side at once, and very soon patients
began needing a doctor. Here a cut, there a wrench or sprain, and
later came thirty or forty at a time with snow-blindness or
conjunctivitis--very painful and disabling, though not fatal to sight.
One morning we had been kept late relieving these various slight
ailments, and the men being mostly out on the ice made me think that
they were among the seals; so I started out alone as soon as I could
slip over the side to join them. This, however, I failed to do till
late in the afternoon, when the strong wind, which had kept the loose
ice packed together, dropped, and in less than no time it was all
"running abroad." The result naturally is that one cannot get along
except by floating on one piece to another, and that is a slow process
without oars. It came on dark and a dozen of us who had got together
decided to make for a large pan not far distant; but were obliged to
give it up, and wait for the ship which had long gone out of sight. To
keep warm we played "leap-frog," "caps," and "hop, skip, and jump"--at
which some were very proficient. We ate our sugar and oatmeal, mixed
with some nice clear snow; and then, shaving our wooden seal bat
handles, and dipping them into the fat of the animals which we had
killed, we made a big blaze periodically to attract the attention of
the ship.
It was well into the night before we were picked up; and no sooner had
we climbed over the rail than the skipper came and gave us the best or
worst "blowing-up" I ever received since my father spanked me. He told
me afterwards that his good heart was really so relieved by our safe
return that he was scarcely conscious of what he said. Indeed, any
words which might have been considered as unparliamentary he asked me
to construe as gratitude to God.
Our captain was a passenger on and prospective captain of the S.S.
Tigris when she picked up those members of the ill-fated Polaris
expedition who had been five months on the ice-pans. He had gone below
from his watch and daylight was just breaking when the next watch came
and reported a boat and some people on a large pan, with the American
flag flying. A kayak came off and Hans, an Eskimo, came alongside and
said, "Ship lost. Captain gone." Boats were immediately lowered and
nineteen persons, including two women and one baby, born on the
ice-pan, came aboard amidst cheers renewed again and again. They had
to be washed and fed, cleaned and clothed. The two officers were
invited to live aft and the remainder of the rescued party being
pestered to death by the sealing crew in the forecastle, it was
decided to abandon the sealing trip, and the brave explorers were
carried to St. John's, the American people eventually indemnifying the
owners of the Tigris.
In hunting my patients I started round with a book and pencil
accompanied by the steward carrying a candle and matches. The invalids
were distributed in the four holds--the after, the main, forecastle,
and foretop-gallant-forecastle. I never went round without a bottle of
cocaine solution in my pocket for the snow-blind men, who suffered the
most excruciating pain, often rolling about and moaning as if in a
kind of frenzy, and to whom the cocaine gave wonderful relief. Very
often I found that I must miss one or even both holds on my first
rounds, for the ladders were gone and seals and coals were exchanging
places in them during the first part of the day. Once down, however,
one shouts out, "Is there any one here?" No answer. Louder still, "Is
there any one here?" Perhaps a distant cough answers from some dark
recess, and the steward and I begin a search. Then we go round
systematically, climbing over on the barrels, searching under sacks,
and poking into recesses, and after all occasionally missing one or
two in our search. It seems a peculiarity about the men, that though
they will lie up, they will not always say anything about it. The
holds were very damp and dirty, but the men seemed to improve in
health and fattened like the young seals. It must have been the pork,
doughs, and excellent fresh meat of the seal. We had boiled or fried
seal quite often with onions, and I must say that it was excellent
eating--far more palatable than the dried codfish, which, when one has
any ice work, creates an intolerable thirst.
The rats were making a huge noise one night and a barrel man gave it
as his opinion that we should have a gale before long; but a glorious
sunshine came streaming down upon us next morning, and we decided
perforce the rats were evidently a little previous.
On Sunday I had a good chance to watch the seals. They came up, simply
stared at the ship; now from sheer fat rolling on their backs, and
lying for a few seconds tail and flippers beating the air helpless.
These baby seals resemble on the ice nothing so much as the South Sea
parrot fish--that is, a complete round head, with somewhere in the
sphere two huge black dots for eyes and a similar one for a nose.
These three form the corners of a small triangle, and except for the
tail one could not easily tell which was the back and which the belly
of a young white-coat--especially in stormy weather. For it is a
well-ascertained fact that Nature makes the marvellous provision that
in storm and snow they grow fattest and fastest. I have marvelled
greatly how it is possible for any hot-blooded creature to enjoy so
immensely this terribly cold water as do these old seals. They paddle
about, throw themselves on their backs, float and puff out their
breasts, flapping their flippers like paws over their chests.
Sunday morning we were lying off Fogo Island when some men came aboard
and reported the wreck of the S.S. Wolf in the ice. She got round the
island, a wind offshore having cleared the ice from the land. Three
other vessels were behind her. Hardly, however, had she got round when
the northerly wind brought the ice back. The doomed ship now lay
between the main or fixed frozen shore ice and the immense floe which
was impelled by the north wind acting on its whole irregular surface.
The force was irresistible. The Wolf backed and butted and got twenty
yards into a nook in the main ice, and lay there helpless as an
infant. On then swept the floe, crashed into the fixed ice, shattered
its edge, rose up out of water over it, which is called "rafting,"
forced itself on the unfortunate ship, rose over her bulwarks, crushed
in her sides, and only by nipping her tightly avoided sinking her
immediately. Seeing that all was lost, Captain Kean got the men and
boats onto the pans, took all they could save of food and clothes, but
before he had saved his own clothing, the ice parted enough to let her
through and she sank like a stone, her masts catching and breaking in
pieces as she went. A sorrowful march for the shore now began over the
ice, as the three hundred men started for home, carrying as much as
they could on their backs. Many would have to face empty cupboards and
hard times; all would have days of walking and rowing and camping
before they could get home. One hundred miles would be the least, two
and even three hundred for some, before they could reach their own
villages. Some of these poor fellows had walked nearly two hundred
miles to get a chance of going on the lost ship, impelled by hunger
and necessity. Alas, we felt very sad for them and for Captain Kean,
who had to face almost absolute ruin on account of this great loss.
The heaving of the great pans, like battering-rams against the sides
of the Neptune, made a woesome noise below decks. I was often glad of
her thirty-six inches of hardwood covering. Every now and then she
steamed ahead a little and pressed into the ice to prevent this. I
tried to climb on one of the many icebergs, but the heavy swell made
it dangerous. At every swell it rolled over and back some eight feet,
and as I watched it I understood how an iceberg goes to wind. For it
acted exactly like a steam plough, crashing down onto one large pan as
it rolled, and then, as it rolled back, lifting up another and
smashing it from beneath. A regular battle seemed to be going on, with
weird sounds of blows and groanings of the large masses of ice.
Sometimes as pieces fell off the water would rush up high on the side
of the berg. For some reason or other the berg had red-and-white
streaks, and looked much like an ornamental pudding.
At latitude 50.18, about Funk Island, is one of the last refuges of
the great auk. A few years ago, the earth, such as there is on these
lonely rocks, was sifted for the bones of that extinct bird, and I
think three perfect skeletons, worth a hundred pounds sterling each,
were put together from the remnants discovered. One day the captain
told me that he held on there in a furious gale for some time. Masses
of ice, weighing thirty or forty tons, were hurled high up and lodged
on the top of the island. Some men went out to "pan" seals on a large
pan. Seven hundred of the animals had been placed on one of them, and
the men had just left it, when a furious breaking sea took hold of
the pan and threw it completely upside down.
I am never likely to forget the last lovely Sunday. We had nearly "got
our voyage"; at least no one was anxious now for the credit of the
ship. The sunshine was blazing hot as it came from above and below at
the same time, and the blue sky over the apparently boundless field of
heaving "floe" on which we lay made a contrast which must be seen to
be appreciated. I had brought along a number of pocket hymn-books and
in the afternoon we lay out on the high fore-deck and sang and talked,
unworried by callers and the thousand interruptions of the land. Then
we had evening prayers together, Catholic and Protestant alike; and
for my part I felt the nearness of God's presence as really as I have
felt it in the mysterious environment of the most magnificent
cathedral. Eternal life seemed so close, as if it lay just over that
horizon of ice, in the eternal blue beyond.