The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1910-10-12
THE PERIL OF SEAL HUNTING
ANNUALLY KILL NEARLY 800, 900
ANIMALS IN ONE MONTH.
Slaughter of White Coated Babies

Men Often Perish in the Bitter Rig
ors of the Arctic Night. Fortunes
Made by the Owners of the Steam
ers. Seals and Their Habits.
The chief industrial pursuit of
Newfoundland, next to the cod fish
ing, is seal hunting. More than a
third of a million seals are killed
every year in March, their value be-
ing nearly $650,000. All this hunt
ing has to be compressed within
single month The hide and the oil
to be obtained from the fat are the
objects of the chase. The leather
made from the skins is used for
pocketbooks, travelling bags and
many other commercial purposes.
These are called hair seals, and pro-
duce no fur. They are found in the
greatest numbers off the coast of
Newfoundland.
Half a century ago this annual
seal hunt was prosecuted by sailing
vessels, and it was no unusual sight
to see a fleet of from 800 to 400
schooners leaving st. Johns harbOr
on March LIST bound for the frozen
north With the advent of the age
of steam these schoOners disappeared
and their places were taken by
steamers built to stand the tremen-
dous strain of the constant fight
with the Arctic ice.
Most of them are vessels of 5000
or 5000 tons capacity, and all are
sheathed in double thickness of
steel, so that they may crash their
way through the huge masses of ice
that are the waTders of the frozen
north Their bows are so shaped
that if the ice is too thick to be
broken by the terrific impact of the
vessel the ship will slide partly up
on the ice itself and break through
it by the downward pressure of it's
thousands of tons weight.
Perils Are Many.
Up in the ice-bound north Atlantic,
where the March days are only an
hour or so long, the seal hunters
risk death in the icy water a hun
dred times a day, crossing the loose
ice and leaping from one ice pan to
another. The Newfoundlanders are
upequaled as seal hunters. From
childhood up they practice crossing
floating ice. But the shifting ice is
not the only peril they have to face.
When once the seals are found the
hunters scatter in all directions over
the foes. Sometimes they go seven,
eight and even ten miles from the
ship.
Up at the masthead, standing in a
barrel, the lookout watches them as
best he can through the darkness and
the storm. The steamer is forced
through the ice continually in the
direction that the men have taken,
so as to pick them up. But every
now and then parties get separated
from their ships, a blizzard fiercer
than ever is known in other ATTITUDES
sweeps down from the pole and men
perish by the score in the bitter
rigors of the Arctic night. Proper
tionately more lives are lost in this
month of seal hunting than are sac
rificed by the fishers on the Grand
Banks during their longer season of
toll
In the early winter the seals are
drawn south by the vast shoals of
fish around the Grand Banks. But
early in the year they leave the
open water there for the ice fields of
the extreme north of Newfoundland
and the Straits of Belle Isle. With
the calm weather that usually comes
in January immense ice fields are
formed on this part of the ocean.
which extend into the deep indenta-
lions of the land. Field ice of this
character, although continually in
motion, Influenced by the wind and
tide, becomes firmly anchored to the
shore. This is known as the
''whelping ice," and there during
January and February the young
seals are born. They are beautiful
. little white-coated beings, with plain
tive eyes and almost a child-like cry.
Keen Mother Instinct.
The mothers wander 20 or 80
miles away in search of food, swim
ming under the ice or in the narrow
lanes between the packs. Each
mother leaves her baby beside a
blowhole in the ice field, and no mat
ter how far she may wander afieId
when she returns to nurse her off
spring she invariably pops I'D
through the blowhole beside which
she has left it. The ice covers hun
dreds of square miles and scattered
over 1T there are thousands upon
thousands of these baby seals crying
Tor their parents. But the mothers
never make mistake. observations