Young seals are born on the Newfoundland ice February 15th to 25th, and are in perfect condition for the market by March 20th, as they have been well fed by their mothers until then. They are a yellowish white when born and remain so until they begin to take to the water, when the longish white hair is rapidly shed and the young one quickly loses its condition.
Owing to the exciting nature of the work, a trip to the ice is the desire of nearly every Newfoundland boy. The great danger is fog coming down while the men are sealing far from the ship, and next comes the danger of losing the ship and drifting about on the floes until possibly death takes place from cold and starvation.
In 1872 one hundred men perished, fifty going down with the Huntsman on the coast of Labrador. The Bloodhound and Retriever were lost the same year, their crews escaping to Battle Harbor after terrible hardships.
Scoresby tells us of the classical disaster which occurred in 1774 about sixty miles east of Jan Mayen. The sealing fleet, consisting of over fifty vessels, met at the ice edge on March the 29th.
The whole fleet entered the ice streams and their boats went off sealing. A storm suddenly arose, destroying five of the ships and injuring many more, while most of the sealers who were far from their ships were never seen again, almost six hundred men being lost. One could not talk to a sealer long without learning of some horrible accident which had occurred to himself or a friend, and while some of them were given to romance, there could be no question about the perils they encountered or about their bravery and endurance.
Toward the end of February, the sweilers, as they are called, began to arrive in St. John's looking for berths. As the steamers afforded better opportunities, the able men got them, while the older ones took to the sailing craft, where life was not so strenuous. These men were dressed very much alike and were most athletic; some of them were perfectly wonderful in the way they jumped from pan to pan, barely touching some of the smaller ones in passage. The owners did not overfeed the men on these trips, providing them with sea biscuits and pinnacle tea chiefly, pork and duff being served only three days a week and salt fish on Fridays. The water from which the tea was brewed was obtained by thawing pinnacles of ice. When ice floes came together they rafted one on to the other and shattered fragments stuck up in all directions. Snow piled upon these and was frozen. When water was wanted, a body of men with axes went on the ice and broke off the pinnacles, which were taken on board and stacked on deck. As water was required these were put into a tank and steam turned on. Tea was made with this water, and molasses added in place of cream and sugar. Our water for the cabin use was not obtained from this source.
On steamers the crew received one-third of the catch, on sailing ships one-half. This was made to the Newfoundland men only on the Dundee ships, the Dundee crew getting paid so much a month, as well as a fraction of the catch. When a ship was amongst the white coats, as the young seals were called, the crew lived well, as they ate the livers, hearts and flippers of the seals. The men carried a supply of livers and hearts in their belts and ate them frozen or cooked as opportunity afforded. It is easy to see how little cooking can be done for a crew of three hundred men on a small ship. I have often seen a man tie a cord to a liver and drop it into a pot of tea sitting on the galley stove, drawing it out when warmed up or when the owner of the pot came for his tea.