by Gary Collins
In the grey dawn of March 16, the Newfoundland was making her way through heavy ice east of Cape Freels and south of Funk Island. Wes Kean had never seen ice conditions so severe. It kept flowing down out of the north in a stream of white, and now, to make matters worse, the winds had shifted to the west. It bore the floes away from the land and slowed his ship’s progress even more.
Scattered seals were in view. Some were in the swatches of water between the moving pans while others were on the ice. They were hood seals, old ones with their young. The ones in the water bobbed their heads up and down as the ship neared. The adults on the ice reared up to impress, barking in defiance. Kean decided it was time for his men to get a taste of blood. They had been grumbling all day, wondering why they weren’t killing the seals they were passing, so now he would give them their chance at a rally. The ship was moving so slowly, he had no intention of stopping. They would have no trouble catching up. They could leap onto the ice, kill the seals, and tow them with ropes behind them. He ordered George Tuff to select only seasoned men. Tuff chose forty or so experienced hunters to go over the side.
Hood seals were vicious, fighting animals with flipper ends as sharp as razors. Unlike the harp seals, they would defend their young. They could turn as swiftly as a lynx and their roar was blood-curdling.
It was a dangerous game. The broad wooden side sticks were lowered over the ship’s gunnels from port and starboard, falling short of the ice by four feet or more. They swayed and twisted under the men’s weight. At the same instant the men let go of the rickety steps, they would have to jump over the churning moat of ice and water.
Once chosen, they readied themselves quickly. With gaff in hand, a tow rope coiled around their shoulders, and with shouts of pleasure, they jumped over the sides of the ship. They threw their gaffs away from the ship and rappelled backwards like warriors from a castle wall, springing like madmen upon the shifting ice. Those who hadn’t been selected watched and shouted encouragement from the ship’s gunnels. A couple of the sealers going over the side tripped and half fell onto the ice but quickly regained their footing and their dignity, to the delight of the onlookers. They grabbed their gaffs and raced away toward the seals with cries from the other sealers:
“Get dat big bugger off the nar’wes’! Never min’ ’e’s bark. ’Tis ’e’s bite you should look out fer. Ha!”
“Bring back a meal o’ young ’earts. Don’t dawdle! Step lively, b’y!”
“Flippers we wants, b’ys! Lots of ’em! Starved fer a meal, we are!”
“’Ave a good rally, now, b’ys. ’Tis a great day fer flipsyin’ in the cove! Min’ yer mom now and don’t get yer feet wet. Ha!”
“Never min’ the cowardly dog. ’Tis the smutty bitch as will rip into yer legs! Snarly, she is.” This was the sealers’ name for a female seal with its first pup.
But the sealers on the ice ran on without answering, jumping between pans and over ridges of ice. Among them were a few “gunners” and “dogs.” One of the gunners raised his rifle and fired at a huge hood seal coming toward him. A puff of smoke flew out of the long gun before one side of the seal’s head disintegrated and the animal fell over in a lump of fatty flesh. The men cheered. The dog passed the gunner another bullet and he aimed again. Suddenly, a small black animal ran into view and stopped to stare at the seal hunters.
“Would ya look at dat now, b’ys!” shouted one of the sealers aboard the ship. “A fox, by God! An’ a black one, too! Miles from lan’, ’e is, poor t’ing. A pity, dat is!” The sealer, who was longing to kill seals, didn’t appreciate the irony of his pitying another animal so far from safety.
The animal had wandered out onto the ice floe and was now close to forty miles from land. The gunner fired again and another female hood dropped. The black fox raced away, disappearing and reappearing again among ridges of white. Soon it was out of sight, heading away from the land.
Behind the gunner and his dog ran the sealers. The gunner, picked for his marksmanship, felled the females and ran on. The hood pups were now defenceless and the sealers eagerly moved in. A single swift, vicious blow to the young animals’ heads, still tender from birth, killed them instantly. Sculping knives were drawn. The seal’s charcoal skin was sliced open from vent to throat with one skilled swipe, revealing the throbbing, steaming, dark red innards.
Only a few of the sealers followed the gunners. The rest of them hunted the pups among the dangerous adult hoods on their own.
The seal herd was not a large one. They were scattered all over the place, some at the ice edge in the water. These the gunners fired at, most of which promptly sank before they could be recovered. It was said that for every adult seal retrieved from the water, twenty of them sank. Sealers and sealing skippers alike frowned upon this practice; they considered the shooting of seals in open water a waste of bullets.
But the killing of seals with bullets was insignificant compared to the slaughter carried out by skilled sealers and their gaffs. They approached the seal hood pups with caution if the mothers were nearby. They held their gaffs perpendicular to their bodies, ready to poke at the adults with the pointed end should the irate animals lunge. They taunted the females with shouts and feints of their own, and by doing so lured them away from their young. Quick as lamplighters, the sealers sprang toward the bawling pups and they were quickly dispatched before the mothers could react. With their sudden lunges, the huge adult hoods were deadly in close quarters but slow to outrun a fleet-footed sealer.
Many of the seals were alone on the ice. Though hard by a bobbing hole, they simply cried and waited for their deaths.
The hood seals were not what the sealers were looking for. They didn’t want old fat, but the skins of young whitecoats, which brought the best money. However, today’s slaughter had whetted the appetite of some of them, as their captain intended. On the bridge of the Newfoundland, ever vigilant in his search for seals, the captain spotted four of the fleet making slow progress through the ice. Though they were far ahead of him, he could tell the vessels were not on the hunt. It gave him comfort to know he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t found the harp seal herds. Still, if only he could communicate with them!
One of the barrelmen shouted down directions to a favourable lead of water and Wes ordered the helm over. The ship’s bow turned more slowly then ever, then suddenly stopped turning altogether. Her port wheel chain had parted. Kean cursed the old gear he was forced to deal with. He shouted for men to go aft and see to the repair before ordering Tuff to get the sealers aboard while the chains were fixed.
The ship’s whistle was sounded and the sealers started returning from far astern. They towed the skins, carcasses, and viscera of hood seals behind them, staining the virgin ice with blood. A hard hiss of steam came from the ship’s windlass and her derrick swung outboard with a squeal. The hook, called the seal dog, was lowered down and passed through the tow rope bights, and the seals were slung aboard. They had killed less than 200. The men made quick work of loading. The wheel chain was repaired and the ship moved on again.
The last of the sealers with their loads still on the ice had to walk fast to catch up. Ice was crushed and pushed aside of the Newfoundland’s hull, some of it thrown onto the ice with her movement. Great slabs of ice, four to five feet thick, overturned to expose their clear blue undersides. They could easily bury and kill a man. The sealers on the ice yelled and cursed, but the ship steamed on. Her young skipper stared out the bridge window, apparently more concerned with finding the herds of harp seals than the loading of a few paltry hood pelts.
Crewmen jumped down the side sticks and handed ends of ropes to the men running alongside. They laughed and cursed as they hauled the seals up, the blood from the blubbery hides painting a path up the ship’s hull. The last of the sealers clambered aboard. And the Newfoundland had tasted her first blood of the season.
11
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sp; Funk island is another point of land that suddenly appears far out to sea. To sailors it looks as though it doesn’t belong, a full thirty-eight miles northeast of Cape Freels. It is a flat, barren, desolate island that resembles a badly drawn triangle, rising to no more than forty-six feet above sea level. It is intrusive igneous with alkaline feldspar properties: in other words, granite rock. Its ancient past is a violent one, as its two faults lines, which run parallel to each other, can attest. The island is no more than a half-mile long and at its widest point is one-fifth of a mile. Off the southwestern end of the island, two rocks that appear to have been flung away from the bigger island are constantly awash by the seas.
Sailors call the area The Funks. There is no safe landing place, even with moderate seas. However, over the years, daring people have taken their chances on calm days—rare events here, indeed—and left their names. Landing Rock. Escape Point. Indian Gulch. Artifacts of Beothuk Indians have been found here: spearheads and arrowheads dated for their age, and a broken paddle, the remains of what appears to be a simple birchbark canoe.
These natives from the island of Newfoundland had paddled here in their small crafts to gather eggs and birds. It must have taken superhuman nerve and intelligence to come over the mysterious sea aboard a frail canoe whose gunnels were just inches above the water. The low-lying Funks are not easily seen from afar. The Beothuk would have had to venture far from land in their quest for food. But then, water is only a barrier for those who fear it. The only thing the Beothuk feared were the white-skinned Europeans who came in their great ships, marauding, stealing their lands, and killing them.
The great auk was the Northern Hemisphere’s largest seabird. They could not fly, and so they were easily killed. Their only nesting place in the world was The Funks. Tales are recorded of the early Europeans killing them by the thousands. Jacques Cartier, in his book Navigations of Newe Fraunce:
In lesse than halfe an houre we filled two boates ful of them, as if they had beene with stones: So that besides them which we did eate fresh, every ship did powder and salt five or tene barrels ful of them.
Tales abound of the early sailors cooking them alive, and driving them up over gangways to waiting crews. The bird’s fat was used in lamps, its feathers for stuffing, its flesh and eggs for food. They were hunted and killed without mercy. Between the years 1800 and 1844, the great auk, hunted beyond recovery by the discoverers of Newfoundland, disappeared from the world. During the same period, these men ended another native species, too. On June 6, 1829, the last living Beothuk woman, Shanawdithit, died in captivity.
The name Funk means vapour or evil smell. The nitrate- and phosphate-laced guano of one of the world’s most important seabird colonies can be easily detected from miles to its lee. Many species of seabirds, including the great auk, have nested and lived there: Arctic tern; northern gannet; northern fulmar; great black-backed gull; herring gull; black-legged kittiwake; razorbill; thick-billed murre; Atlantic puffin; and the most plentiful of them all, the common murre, which Newfoundlanders call turrs.
On March 17, the sealers aboard the SS Newfoundland smelled the island long before it came abeam. Even in winter and still months away from the breeding season, The Funks lived up to their name. Two other ships, the SS Diana and the Ranger, worked their way toward the Newfoundland. They were all headed for the same stretch of open leads. Long before they reached the open water, all three vessels became jammed in heavy ice and in easy walking distance of each other. There were no seals to be seen, so the sealers went bird hunting.
They had boiled and fried the hood seal carcasses, though they didn’t like it much. The hood seal meat was strong, coarse, and fishy. Even the meat from the young wasn’t tender like the meat from a young harp seal. The sealers especially relished the thin tenderloin that grew along the spine of the harp seal. Fried in an iron skillet with pork fat and onions for just a few minutes, it was delicious. However, for many of these hard-working men, this was the first fresh meat they had tasted for months.
“Beds o’ turrs in the leads ahead, b’ys,” shouted the barrelman. “Millions of ’em! More’n that, boys, dey’re by the t’ousan’s! Ducks, too, by God!”,
“Someone run far’d, b’ys, an’ see if th’ second ’and will ’low us to go fer a meal o’ turrs.”
George Tuff went to the captain and passed on the sealers’ request. Kean was not in a good mood and was about to dismiss the idea outright when he reconsidered. His men had been aboard ship for days with little to do and morale was low. His ship was jammed solid in close proximity to the other ships, and he planned on conferring with their captains.
“’Ave the b’ys take a few shells from the lazaret and try fer a meal o’ turrs fer the men. None o’ them young gaffers, mind, pick our best gunners. No need to be wastin’ shot. ’Sides, a few meals o’ turrs will save on ship’s stores.”
Tuff was pleased with Kean’s permission but not his reasons. He turned to arrange the bird hunting trip when Kean spoke to him again.
“Tell ’em to ’ave an eye fer a duck or two while they’re out dere.”
“Aye, sir!” Tuff said, and exited the bridge.
It was a dull day, mild with a misty rain. With a fresh breeze out of the southwest, the temperature had warmed up some. Just about all the sealers from the ships were on the ice. The talk was about seals and where they expected to find the main patch. The sealers and their captains always believed there was a massive herd of seals out there, the elusive main patch.
The five or six gunners started off. Each man carried a long-barrelled, breech-loading musket on his shoulder and a bag with cartridges in his hand. The lead of water the lookouts had directed them to was nearly a mile away over very rough ice. It was hard going. They had to weave around ice formations and jump across small rents in the floes to get there. As they neared the water, the raft of eider ducks saw them coming and flew off. Some of the turrs did, too, but most of them just dived and appeared again farther away from the ice edge. The sealers figured the lead was no more than two gunshots across and half a mile long. They approached from the leeward side so that any birds they killed would float toward them. A few feet from the lead of water, they hid behind high clumps of ice and began firing. The turrs dived and emerged again on the surface, swimming by the dozens. The skilled gunners waited for the birds to line up before shooting, often killing several with one shot.
The three skippers met on the ice between their vessels. The ships looked out of place, black and useless, embedded in the Great White Plain. The sealing captains all voiced their concerns and agreed these were the worst ice conditions they had seen for years. None of them had seen any of the harp herds yet. They had only a few hundred seal pelts aboard. The time for killing whitecoats was now at its prime; in a few more days the young seals would be taking to the water and the opportunity for a good harvest would be lost. Every spring it was a game of hide and seek: they steamed north to the ice and searched for the birthing seals. It was a tedious game, always risky and forever dangerous.
From a distance came a popping noise as the captains talked and smoked. “’Avin’ target practice, is dey, Wes?” one of the captains said with a grin.
“Ya knows ’ow ’tis now, b’ys”, Wes Kean drawled. “My fellers from Bonavist’ Bay can’t pass up a chance fer a good meal o’ turrs. Saltwater ducks is my table, though. Slim chance of dat today, though, I ’lows.”
“The steel fleet are all headin’ fer the bottom of Notre Dame Bay, right up into Green Bay,” the skipper interjected, getting their conversation back on track. “Me wireless man got a word from ’em. The breeze out of the sou’wes’ has loosened the ice a bit. Makes fer better steamin’ be the lan’. Damn and bugger the luck, to be caught out ’ere!”
“Dat’s right enough. My feller picked it up on our set, too. Wonderful t’ing to ’ave aboard a vessel, dat is,” came from the other ski
pper.
Wes kept his head down and said little. He suddenly felt distanced from the rest of the sealing fleet.
“Got stowaways aboard, ’ave ’e?” one of the skippers queried Kean.
Wes’s dark eyes flashed. “Snuck aboard in S’n John’s, the shaggers did. Kept wit’ the rest of me men large as life fer days, they did!”
“Found one on me own ship,” another captain said with a grin. “What odds, I say. ’Tis what I done meself. Little ’arm in it, I says.” He was a good-natured man.
“They are all bad luck, sir,” Wes replied. “The lot of ’em. Jammed in ice since the day we found ’em! I’d like to put the young buggers ashore on The Funks!”
“Ah! A man’s a man, young er ol’, I says. Wit’ no say of the way wit’ wind and tide, er ice, either. The young feller found aboard our vessel is comin’ along smart, like. Stowaway dis year, swiler the next, I says!”
The captains soon parted with rough goodbyes and returned to their respective ships.
Later, the gunners returned laden with plump turrs. They tossed them up aboard the Newfoundland, where eager hands began to pluck them. The captain’s cook appeared, grabbed several of the birds, and walked forward. That evening the sealers below decks feasted on dark turr meat boiled in pots on their bogies. They preferred to have them baked, but the bogies were not equipped with ovens. Some of the men had the birds cooked with salt beef, some with fat pork, while others had them cooked with both. Others added vegetables to the pot, making a rich turr soup.
On the bridge, the captain of the Newfoundland was in a dour mood. It stung him that he couldn’t communicate news of the ice conditions and the seals with the other ships in the fleet. Not only that, while his officers were eating succulent turrs baked in pork rinds and onions from his galley oven, he was dining on salt beef, with more fat than beef, and cabbage—again!
* * * * *
“talkin’ ’bout me today, they was, ya know,” said John Antle. “The skippers, I mean. Some of the men, too. Calls me the stowaway, even though they knows me name. I heard ’em call me bad luck. Funny, though, they never says a word about Offie Chalk. He hid aboard, same as me!”
