5.2-Making a Living off the Sea--Sealing*

Sealing

Of the six seal species that live in Canada's north, it was the harp seal that was the most hunted. For this reason I will concentrate on this particular species.

Harp Seal
Source: Arctic Ocean Diversity

Harp seals migrate in large groups from the waters around Buffin Island in the Arctic Ocean to areas south around Newfoundland and Labrador and to the Gulf of the St. Laurence Stream. These areas are their birthing grounds. They will spend six to eight weeks here giving birth, feeding on small fish and crustaceans and raising their young until they can swim. When the ice recedes in February they will return back to the Arctic.

Source: Canadian Geographic

Europeans learned about the importance of seal, its fur, meat and oil from the Aboriginal people who had been hunting the animal for survival. Seal oil was a sought after commodity already late in the 18th century. In England, by 1780 it served to light lamps in homes and factories and to lubricate machinery which spurred on the industrial revolution. Soon there were hundreds of vessels each carrying 50 men or so engaged in sealing each spring.

Source: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage 

In Newfoundland the sealing industry first expanded in Conception Bay with towns like Harbor Grace and later, from 1870 onward in St. John's at its center (see map to the left). Preparing and provisioning to go out onto the ice was big business.

Owners and captains came from these areas whereas sealers came from outports from all over the place. Newfoundland's seal hunting reached its peak in the 1840s--there is talk about legendary captains and heroic sealers as well as sealing catastrophes.

The work of the sealers and their captains was extremely dangerous. Sailing ships would steam into dangerous floes, sometimes the ships would get stuck and all the men had to pull the ship forward. The men usually left the ship and walked on the ice floes looking for seals, sometimes as far as 7 km away from the ship. Sudden blizzards and other weather phenomena made this enterprise even more dangerous and in such a case the only way back to the ship was listening to the distant ship's horn.

Sealers on ice floes.
Source: Museum 'Home from the Sea', Elliston.

Sealing provided much needed meat for many households, a means of survival at a time of the year when resources ran scarce. The money made from sealing was also an important resource for each household; with it they were able to buy household items and/or other necessities such as cloth. Some but very few sealers were able to become well off.

The museum in Elliston--Bonavista which opened June 2014 tells the story of the area's greatest sealing tragedy which occurred in 1914. A terrible storm took the lives of  254 men, an event keenly felt by many households in the outports. The museum commemorates these losses as well as all other losses that occurred in sealing tragedies over time.

Men on floes pulling their seals
Source here

* NOTE: The sources for the content of this blog originate from public domain sources such as Canadian Geographic, the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web site, the International Marine Mammal Association, the museum of 'Home from the Sea' in Elliston-Bonavista, Arctic Ocean Diversity web site.