The Newfoundland Seal Fishery

Transcription

1 The Newfoundland Seal Fishery By H. G. G. E VERY year the vast field of ice which drifts south past the eastem coast of Newfoundland is the scene of an exploit which rivals the Polar expeditions in courage and hardship. The ice bears with it thousands of seals, and it is in quest of these mammals that a fleet of ships leaves St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, during the first week of March. In recent years the progress of science has changed the method of this hazardous undertaking, but the crews who man the steamships of to-day are of the same spirit as their fathers who ventured fo~h in the old &'Wooden Walls." The season is very short-less than two monthsand for this reason the sealing companies do not maintain permanent crews for their ships, but recruit them from the fishermen of the outlying villages around St. John's. These men, reared from childhood in the lore of the sea, are eager to supplement the eamings gained at the summer cod fishery, and exert great efforts to become members of the crews-to get, in the local phrase, " a berth to the ice." The captains are besieged with requests long before the fleet sails, and occasionally it has been found ----.J"'- /C'-fl-1-- necessary to insert in the newspapers a notice to the effect that all berths in certain ships have been allocated; and this has happened several months before the sailing date. Neverthe- ~ - I IS

2 THE NEWFOUNDLAND SEAL FISHERY less, scores of fishermen proceed to St. John's, on foot if necessary, in the hope of filling a possible vacancy; many are disappointed, but upwards of two thousand eventually sail from St. John's, bound for the ice. The presence of stowaways on the larger ships is never a matter of doubt; the one point of conjecture is the number who have thus risked the wrath of an irate skipper, and the fact that most of the stowaways are children of school age would indicate that the spirit of adventure is not lacking amongst the youth of the Oldest Colony. If there is a large number of them, the captain may put them ashore at one of the settlements near the capital, but otherwise they will remain aboard for the whole of the voyage, and serve as cabin-boys or in the galley. The rewards of the seal fishery, as of many another dangerous calling, are not at all proportionate to the risks which are run, and the ships have often been forced to return to port with a very small catch; consequently the men may receive little or nothing for their labours, for they are paid no fixed wage, but are dependent on the value of the catch for their portion. The success of the voyage depends largely upon the ~ ship's striking ~ the ''main patch," the large body of seals somewhere on the vast icefloe, and it is here that the captains are put to the test, for the men look to them to I 16

3 H. G. G. point the way to the seals. The captains seem to possess an instinct to spot seals which can only be bom of years of experience, and in their knowledge of the northem seas the Newfoundland sealing captains are probably unequalled. Captain " Bob " Bartlett, master of Peary's ship, Roosevelt~ on the successful North Pole expedition, is a son of Newfoundland, and learned the ways of the -- ice-floes at the seal fishery. Sons frequently follow their fathers, and in some families sealing is a tradition. Under such leadership the crews perform miracles of endurance when the seals are sighted, and this would tend to bear out the story of the veteran who asserted that the sealers would have reached the Pole long before Peary-if there had been any seals there. Before the advent of wireless nothing was known of the fleet until the retum, triumphal or otherwise, to St. John's. To-day, the ships are in constant touch with the shore, and a daily bulletin of movements and catches is received from each, and is then broadcast. In this way interested parties ashore-and there are many-are kept informed of the progress of the voyage. Like all maritime countries, Newfoundland has in its history records of many disasters. Besides those of the cod fishery, there have been great sealing tragedies, with the bite of Arctic cold to lend the atmosphere of the days of Henry Hudson and the search 117

4 THE NEWFOUNDLAND SEAL FISHERY for the North-West Passage. Before the days of steam, the fishery was carried on by numerous sailing vessels, and many stories are told of the havoc wrought by the grim north-east wind: in the spring of 1852, for instance, some forty vessels were wrecked- on the Wadham Islands, a few miles off the coast. The year 1898 is often referred to in Newfoundland as the " Year of the Greenland Disaster " : over one hundred and fifty of the Greenland's crew \Vere marooned on the ice by a terrific storm which locked the ship in the grip of the floes, separating ship and men by the formation of a huge lake. The fury of the blizzard prevented the launching of boats, and the unfortunate men were exposed to the rigours of an Arctic storm on the open wastes of the ice-fields. Finally, when the storm abated a little, boats set out from the Greenland, and with great difficulty reached the stranded party. Of the original one hundred and fifty-four, forty-eight were frozen to death or had slipped to their doom through the ice, and over sixty of the remainder were terribly frost-bitten. In 1914 there were two major disasters; the Southern Cross, retuming after a successful voyage, was lost with all h~r crew, a total of one hundred and seventy-three men, and the Newfoundland suffered the loss o seventy-seven, who had become confounded by a blinding snowstorm and had lost contact with their ship. The most recent disaster occurred on Sunday, March 15th, 1931, when the Viking, which had on board a young American explorer named Varick Frissell, was shattered by the explosion of dynamite in the hold, and later caught fire and sank. Frissell, a graduate of Yale University, was engaged in filming a story of the fishery, and had made a similar voyage the previous year. On the evening of the 15th he had been sitting in the Captain's cabin when a heavy explosion shat- 1 IS

5 H. G. G. tered the Viking; he was never seen again; although the wireless operator, who had been in the cabin with him, was rescued after two days of torture on a makeshift raft, drifting among the jagged ice slabs. When it was seen that the ship would sink, those who were able to do so set off over the ice towards Horse Island, the nearest settlement, where there was wireless connection with the outside world. Some died on the way; utterly exhausted, they followed the immortal example. of Captain Oates by refusing to retard their comrades by their own weakness. Meanwhile, at Horse Island, the wireless operator, who had informed St. John's of the explosion which had been heard, continued to give detailed information as the remnant of the crew straggled into the settlement. A rescue ship from St. John's with doctors and nurses set out, and succeeded in picking up one of Frissell's film colleagues and two companions, one of whom later died as a result of exposure. In all, twenty-eight men were lost, and the rescue ship, Sagona, had a sad homecoming, bearing the broken and battered survivors. The introduction of wireless has done much to effect prompt rescue-work, but the undertaking is hardly less arduous than in the days of sailing-ships. ~ ~ Some sluggish men are improved by drink, as some fruits are not good until they are rotten. liazlitt. I 19