Part 10 (1/2)

THE SEAL FISHERY

Returning South in the fall of 1895, business necessitatedfor some time in St John's, where as previously the Governor, Sir Terence O'Brien, very kindly entertainedtime 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 fisherh with extreain open after MondayThis was early on Saturday

Business went on as usual, but a 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 weredisaster never really dawned oneither 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- 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 alarland next day and I went down after breakfast to buy ent sold it, but reer It is a speculation selling you this ticket” Before we sailed the vessel was held up by the Govern notes at face value Those of the Co twenty cents Besides the banks quite a number of commercial firms also closed The directors of the banks were all local merchants, and iven out to their ”planters,” as they call the fisheroods 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 ardener had to give IOU orders on shops--there si since adjusted theood standing ca 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 ofin the hardest of schools, for great self-reliance and resource, besides skill in handling men and shi+ps In those days the doyen of the fleet was Captain Samuel Blandford He fired me with tales of the hardshi+ps to be encountered and the opportunities and needs for a doctor a three hundred men hundreds of miles from anywhere The result was a decision to return early froood shi+p Neptune

I look back on this as one of the great treats of h I believe it to be an industry seriously detrimental to the welfare of the people of the Colony and the outside world For noa year can stand, when their young are just born and are entirely helpless, being attacked by huge steel-protected stea hundreds of e is also taken of the”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 ani stea the 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 shi+p Neptune hauled out into the strea anchor for the seal fishery The law allows no vessels to sail before 2 PM 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 tirossed in the one absorbing topic of the seal fishery

Itat least to the Colony--it meant bread for thousands of people--it meant for days and even weeks past thatat the capital, till thecrowds, 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 shi+p 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 herlook as she sits on the water Her sides are soreenheart” 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 s 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 sos of flour, hard bread, and food for the crew of three hundred and twenty ine 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 tih Then there is the clearer, heavy Arctic ice with here and there huge icebergs frozen in; and again the s ice”--that is, the Arctic shore ice, born probably in Labrador, on which the seals give birth to their pups

The ht and day in the forebarrel to ”scun” the shi+p--that is, to find the way or leads through the ice This word co tower on aof the 10th arrives, all is excitement Fortunately this year a southind had blown the ice a mile or so offshore

Now all the s 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 SS Aurora comes up the harbour Cheers from the shi+ps, the wharves, and the town answer her whistle, and closely followed by the SS Neptune and SS 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 perishedfor seals on the frozen ice of Trinity Bay when the wind changed and drove the ice offshore When night caale of wind blowing, they could not hope to reach land in their s but an awful death stared them in the face, for in order to hunt over the ice htly 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 excite over broken loose ice on the bosohty ocean, and the skill and athletic qualities which the work de fro and leaping fro 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 anotherhis seal nets when a ”dwey” or snowstoreable and drifted off to sea They struck a sht the father and the 'prentice lad died, and nextthe 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 war that he saw a shi+p he walked fivehis boat behind The phantoht he had to trainning to give up hope when a vessel, the Flora, suddenly hove in sight He shouted loudly as it was dark, whereupon she iain 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 hoe ere lucky enough to come early into the seals Froreat deal of ti black dots spread away in thousands all over the ice-floes through which ere butting, ra 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 ht ailthe 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 ti 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 caether decided to ive it up, and wait for the shi+p which had long gone out of sight To keep e played ”leap-frog,” ”caps,” and ”hop, skip, and juar and oat our wooden seal bat handles, and dipping them into the fat of the ani blaze periodically to attract the attention of the shi+p

It ell into the night before ere picked up; and no sooner had we cliave us the best or worst ”blowing-up” I ever received since ood heart was really so relieved by our safe return that he was scarcely conscious of what he said Indeed, any words which ht have been considered as unparliaratitude to God

Our captain was a passenger on and prospective captain of the SS

Tigris when she picked up those members of the ill-fated Polaris expedition who had been five one below fro when the next watch cae pan, with the A A kayak caside and said, ”shi+p lost Captain gone” Boats were i tomen and one baby, born on the ice-pan, caain They had to be washed and fed, cleaned and clothed The two officers were invited to live aft and the re 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 Aris

In hunting my patients I started round with a book and pencil acco a candle and matches The invalids were distributed in the four holds--the after, the allant-forecastle I never went round without a bottle of cocaine solution in my pocket for the snow-blindabout and ave wonderful relief Very often I found that I must miss one or even both holds on one and seals and coals were exchanging places in the 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 froin a search Then we go round syste under sacks, and poking into recesses, and after all occasionallyone or two in our search It seeh they will lie up, they will not always say anything about it The holds were very damp and dirty, but theseals It hs, and excellent fresh meat of the seal We had boiled or fried seal quite often with onions, and I --far more palatable than the dried codfish, which, when one has any ice work, creates an intolerable thirst

The rats were ave it as his opinion that we should have a gale before long; but a glorious sunshi+ne ca, and we decided perforce the rats were evidently a little previous