CHAPTER XIV

_ON SEALS AND SEALERS_

[Illustration: The S.S. _Sir Donald_.]

The hair seal, locally “swile,” affords to the Newfoundland fisherman almost the only means of work in winter which will help him to eke out the meagre living provided by his Labrador voyages. True, there is a home frozen-herring trade, but it is limited to the west coast; and also the new railway employs a certain number of men as long as the inclemencies of winter allow work to proceed. But it is to the spring sealing, or “going to the ice,” as they call it, that most look for the extra few dollars to help fill the children’s mouths. Not long ago every one could go to the ice, for then only sailing-boats went, and the wealth reaped from the voyages passed mostly into the fishermen’s pockets. Now all is revolutionized, and the sealing is in the hands of half-a-dozen firms, that send out big steamers, carrying crews numbering as many as three hundred men. Moreover, the value of seal-oil has greatly decreased, and the expenses of the steamers eat up much of the profit. There are not a few whom one hears growling, “Steam has ruined Newfoundland.”

The hair seal, “Phoca Greenlandica,” must not be confounded with the fur seal of the Pacific, for though the former is found in the Pacific, the latter is never found in the North Atlantic. The fur seal is as a rule larger, has much longer hands and feet in proportion to his body, and also a much longer neck. He is apparently a much more powerful swimmer. There are, however, several kinds of hair seal. The largest is the hood seal. A truly magnificent animal, and one that shows much courage in defending himself against his enemies. Sitting up on his tail and hind legs, he defends himself with teeth and flippers, protecting his head from injury by blowing out a bladder-shaped and shot-proof excrescence on it. The usual method to kill a seal is to hit it upon the nose with a club, called a seal-bat, but when once fairly roused the bull hood seal is invulnerable there. An old sealer described to me a battle between one of these fellows and a polar bear, in which he told us the seal only yielded to be eaten after a prolonged and bloody struggle. It takes two men at least to kill one, for one man has to divert the animal’s attention by striking its tail, while the other endeavours to hit it under the jaw as it turns round.

The most important hair seal, however, is the harp. It is the variety which resort to the ice to breed in such countless thousands, and which the sealing vessels go out in pursuit of. The process of breeding is most interesting. The following account was given me by Captain Blandford, of Newfoundland, perhaps the most successful of all the bold sealing captains:—

“Soon after we got jammed in the ice there appeared from the water four or five old seals, which scrambled up on to its surface. Within five minutes there were 500 seals on it, and in half an hour 200,000 as nearly as we could guess. Scarcely had they come to rest on the ice when they commenced throwing their young, and at once, after whelping, those close to us, being somewhat frightened by the ship, jumped back into the sea, leaving the little seals whimpering exactly like babies.”

The young are born about the 1st of March, and are very small, fat, and snowy white, remaining so up till the 20th to 25th, _i.e._ about three weeks, between which date and the 1st of April they are big enough to take to the water. During this period they are known as “whitecoats.” They grow so rapidly that you can almost see them growing, though on the above occasion those close to the ship did not grow nearly as rapidly as those farther away, for the dams were shy about coming to give them suck.

The “whitecoats” are not large enough to kill until they are fourteen days’ old, so that on this occasion the crew had to wait. Now, however, by law no sailing vessel may leave for the ice until the 8th of March, and no steamer till the 12th, under a penalty of $2,000, which gives the seals a chance to get sizeable; nor is a vessel now allowed to make a second voyage the same year, if she has once come back loaded. This prevents the extermination of the mother seals. Great excitement always exists when the sealers are about to start; sometimes it is necessary to cut their way out of the harbour, in which they have been imprisoned during the winter months, with dynamite, saws, and crowbars, the way being cleared beforehand, that not an hour may be lost after the clocks announce midnight of the 11th. This year, 1894, while blasting a way out of the ice in Greenspond Harbour, the S.S. _Walrus_ was severely damaged by the explosion of the dynamite, which shattered her bows, and killed some of her men. The ice was ten feet thick.

The vessels may start from any part of the island, north or south, but no one place is always best, the position of the seals varying every season. There is much competition to get a place among the crews, and the men are carefully selected for their pluck, energy, experience, and physical capacities. These are queer-looking craft to the unaccustomed eye these steam sealers of about 300 to 400 tons burden, with their outside thick sheathing of hard wood, called “ice chocks,” and their huge double stems, filled between with from nine to twelve feet of solid oak, built for charging through floe ice. For when shut in the steamer will back far enough to gain good impetus, and then dash full at the weakest part of the floe. Usually the sloping forepost allows the vessel to rise up on to the ice, the great weight then breaking down into clear water. Anything loose on deck is of course upset, as are any of the crew who happen not to be holding some support. All are rigged with three masts, and can sail as well as steam; and the screw being fixed in a slot can easily be pulled up out of the water at these times. Each masthead is fitted with a barrel or crow’s nest, from which a careful look-out for seals is constantly maintained. When once discovered, the next thing is to keep them to yourself, and, if possible, mislead any other vessels near, who might be apt to join in and so lessen your prize. A captain, well known for his success, was lately dogged in this way by a fresh hand. To mislead his rival the captain steamed into one of the large bays, where, it so happened, he got frozen in while the raw hand, turning out, caught a full voyage.

Once alongside the floe, the men jump off on to the ice, and at once the work begins. Sometimes they work in pairs, one man shooting the seals, and his chum, who is called “the dog,” following up, cutting off the tail from the dead seal to “mark it,” and then gathering them in heaps, and putting up a pole with a flag or a piece of liver as a claim. These are then said to be “panned.” This is technically called “swatching.” When shooting, 1,400 seals in a day is good work for a crew, though they have killed 3,000; but when it is only necessary to “club” them with the seal-bat, 25,000 have been killed in a day, and 47,000 in two days. Sculping (scalping?) is the next process—that is taking off the skin and fat. This scarcely takes a minute. The seal is thrown on its back, ripped up from chin to tail, and the fat and skin, known as the “pelt,” are torn off. The body is no use, and is left on the ice, except that occasionally the hearts are cut out and strung on the hunter’s belts, as a reserve of food in case of necessity.

The mother seals show great sagacity in finding the particular hole, through which she comes and goes for food, among so many thousand others, and at once she finds her own little white pup. They will evince much self-sacrifice in trying to rescue their offspring from danger, at times carrying them in their fore flippers to escape being nipped by ice, or drawing them into the water to teach them to swim. Alas, after a sealer’s visit she will only find a quivering red corpse when she returns. Let us hope she does not recognise it.

When another crew is also at work on the same patch of seals the greatest expedition is naturally used, and under these circumstances the seals will often only be “batted” and stunned, not stabbed to the heart as well, before being skinned. It is this that has given rise to the charges of cruelty, for the naked body has been seen to move around after the operation. Otherwise there is no more cruelty in killing seals than in killing cattle or poultry, and any man who is humane in one will naturally be humane in the other; nor do I think you will find anywhere a more humane set of men than you will among Newfoundland fishermen.

Captain X. was once just forcing his way through ice towards a pack of seals when he sighted a rival vessel coming up under his lee. Backing out, he at once altered his course away from the seals to mislead the other, but was too late to prevent them sighting his seals. The second vessel, being much faster, now ran in between my friend and the ice, and passing him on the starboard side gave the order “hard a starboard” to force him out from his own cutting. Incensed at this, Captain X. from the barrel shouted “hard a port,” and went straight for his rival’s stem. Fortunately an intervening pan of ice prevented a fatal accident, but he ran his bowsprit well over the other’s counter. All hands from the foremost vessel were overboard and hard at work killing and panning seals before Captain X. could land his men; so he shouted, as his final order, “Hand aboard the dead seals; never mind killing live ones,” and then, calmly descending, went and had refreshments with the other captain in the other vessel’s cabin, while the crews were left to fight it out as best they could. They are a brave, generous, and skilful set of men, these sealing captains, and reck little of danger or hardship.

Work proceeds during the night by torchlight, and the scattered fires, with their ruddy glow on the heaps of dead seals and uncouth-looking figures at work, must present indeed a weird sight. Now the pelts have to be brought back to the ship; and in this work the physical capacities of each hunter are tried to the utmost. Six pelts is a full “tow” for one man. Often when the ice is hummocky, or perhaps broken up into pieces, called “slob” ice, and it is necessary to jump from pan to pan, or again when the distance from the ship is long, and the approach of night or the fog render travelling almost impossible, are these men tempted to abandon the hardly-won pelts, and get home themselves to the ship and safety.

Sometimes one hunter will be long adrift from the steamer, and all the rest being back, and all the seals in that patch boarded, the captain is anxious to get off—how anxious, if the patch was a small one and other seals are near, perhaps only a sealing captain knows,—for all ships must be home by April 21st, full or empty. Yet though so much depends on it a stray hunter has never yet been abandoned. It costs a large sum to send these vessels to the ice, and a “clean ship” means a big loss to the merchant, and no money for the men.

[Illustration: Eskimo on an Island near Okkak.]

Sharks, even in these latitudes, are not slow to gather at the smell of slaughter, and can be caught with boathooks between the pans. It is not a rare thing for men to slip off the pans into the water, and it requires no little skill to get out again without help; for the water, naturally, is very cold, and one is apt again and again to slip off back into the water while trying to climb on to the ice. Acts of great heroism are performed sometimes in rescuing a man thus endangered; in one case, the pans being very small, it was not possible to stand on one in order to pull the man out. The rescuer, therefore, quickly throwing off his outer garments, came jumping from piece to piece, making a grab at the struggling man as he passed, trying to push him on far enough for him to catch hold. The second run he succeeded, but, of course, himself ran great peril in the attempt. The vessels eventually, loaded to the gunwales if they have been fortunate, return to St. Johns, every hole and corner being used for stowing the pelts, so that at times the crew will have to sleep wherever they can find a dry spot, even on deck or in the boats.

Once in harbour, the fat is separated and put into enormous vats, the oil being squeezed out from the blubber by their own weight, and being eventually drawn off, clarified, and sold. Now, however, the blubber is usually “rendered” by means of a steam mincer. The skins are salted without being stretched, and are then exported “green,” for making into leather for boot tops, gloves, etc. When the white coat is a year old, he is dark in colour on the back, lighter on the belly, and is known as a “bedlamer harp.” When he is three years old, a large black saddle-shaped mark begins to appear over his back, and he is called a full “bedlamer.” When he is four years old, the saddle is fully and clearly marked, and the seal is then known as the “old harp.”

Seals, as is well known to those who visit Zoological Gardens, are very easily tamed, and display almost the sagacity of dogs. Tales are told of seals which have become so thoroughly tame that they will come and lie before the fire, making friends with the dog and cat; while one, when it had been found too expensive to keep, and had been taken out to sea and dropped overboard, followed the boat ashore again and again, even getting in at the window when the door had been shut against it. The seal is used by the Eskimo for nearly everything. The stretched coat of the bowel serves instead of glass. Their boats are entirely of skin. Their clothing almost all skin. Their winter food almost all seal meat and blubber. Dog food, dog harness, dog whips, etc., are all of seal, or of walrus hide. Moreover, to the settlers, their skins for boots and their fat for oil are invaluable.

In Labrador the “old harps” are caught either in the fall or spring, when the sea is first freezing over or the ice first breaking up, and always along shore, in one of the following ways. Strong twine nets, with very large meshes, are anchored out on the bottom in about twenty to thirty fathoms of water, off prominent headlands, or in the mouths of bays and inlets known to be frequented by seals. These are buoyed on the surface, and in these the seals mesh and drown themselves. This industry is attended with much danger and hardship, for it involves rowing out in all weathers in small boats to clear the nets. Sometimes the buoys are under the ice, and the process known as “creeping” has to be undertaken to find the nets at all, for it will not do to lose these most valuable possessions.

If the nets are not recovered by New Year’s Day, they are lost; yet occasionally they may be recovered immediately the ice goes in April, when, the men tell me, both nets and seals in them are good; but if much time elapses after the floe drifts off, both rot rapidly and are destroyed by animalculæ.

Often hours must be spent “creeping,” and then, perhaps, only some one else’s nets are taken, while all the while each must be carefully watching the other to see he is not getting frostbitten. The nose, ears, or chin will become frozen unknown to the owner and another will cry out “your ears are dead,” the parts having turned snowy white. Then begins the painful and tedious process of rubbing the part with snow—woe betide the sufferer who goes in a heated room, or uses hot water; for a certainty he will lose his ears or his nose—then the creeping must be again proceeded with; or when the nets are partly hauled bad weather will overtake them, perhaps a sudden squall from the high land sweeps down on the little open boat, and the tragedy of “the three fishers” is apt to be enacted over again. In one case, a man described to me how, when out with his brother and another man, while in the act of hauling into the boat a square flipper seal of larger size than usual, the little craft capsized, and his brother, getting cramp from cold, slipped off the bottom of the boat to which all three were clinging. Fortunately, the other two managed, it being a calm day, to hold on till a rescue was effected. It is cold work at best, and, as one stalwart fellow said, “jest a bit hard, that when a man comes home real hungry it should take him half an hour to get the ice off his face before he can find his mouth.” “Yes,” chimed in another, “I lost two toes and this ear,” showing that he had been cropped as if at the pillory. I have myself seen the frozen breath hanging from men’s beards and moustaches till, from nose to chest, it was one huge white mass.

The easier way of catching the “old harps” is with a submerged room of net, resembling the cod-trap, with the difference that the wall which is on the side the seals enter from is lowered to the bottom. A watch is kept from the shore, and as soon as the seals enter the room a rope attached to this wall is wound up on a capstan on the land, and the seals are thus imprisoned. They are now given time to entangle themselves in the net, and so get drowned, or the boat rows off and the hunter shoots the seal before taking it out of the water; for the seals would bite badly if given the chance. The net is thirty to forty fathoms deep, and is set in about six to ten fathoms of water.

The last variety of hair seal is known as the “bay seal.” It frequents the shores, bays, and mouths of fresh-water rivers, up which it breeds, all the summer, and is caught either in mesh nets, or shot from a boat as it puts up its head to breathe. This feat is rendered more easy by the natural curiosity of the seal. As soon as it spies the boat it raises its head and shoulders out of water to get a good view of the stranger. If you now remain quite still, and especially if you can imitate the “Hough, hough” of the animal, it will dive down and in a minute come up nearer the boat. I have been almost ashamed to shoot as it opened its large, human eyes, so full of inquisitiveness. “Bang!” If you are a good shot, your seal will be dead, a bullet through his brain, and you must at once row and pick him up while his few kicks keep him afloat. I remember seeing one sink after being shot, as we rowed off to the _Princess May_ from the shore one day. We stopped over the spot, and peering down into the crystal water, could see him ten fathoms down. Suddenly, one last kick—only it seemed a slight movement—and the carcase rose to the surface for the last time. Up, up! We watched it gyrating round and round, and as it reached the surface, grabbed hold of one flipper and slung it into the boat. We had one or two good meals off that fellow, for we hung him up from our forestay, and the frosty air kept him sweet and fresh as long as we needed him. Had he not arisen we should have got him up by means of our “jiggers,” _i.e._, our heavy leaded hooks.

The Eskimo harpoon their seals from the kayak, occasionally shooting it first; but shooting accurately from a kayak is no easy matter. The harpoon is made of light wood, about three feet in length. On the end of this is fixed a whole walrus tusk, to carry the loose barbed iron top, and also to weight it and carry it truly home. As soon as the seal is struck it dives, taking the harpoon with it, but as the harpoon is attached by about twenty fathoms of walrus hide to an inflated air-tight seal-skin, the hunter spies it, as soon as it comes up, even if it ever succeeds in carrying the buoy down. A few strokes of the paddle brings the kayak once more alongside, and the seal is soon put _hors de combat_ with a lance, lashed on the back of the little boat, and the hunter starts for home, or it is towed home alongside the kayak. When one year old the bay seal is called a “jar seal,” and its skin is poor; in the second year it is a “doter,” and becoming speckled, in the third year, it is a “ranger,” and is then very beautiful, being checkered silver and black all over.

[Illustration: Eskimo in Reindeer Tent, Okkak.]