Noble Fleet of Sealers, A

DESCRIPTION: "There's a noble band of sealers being fitted for the ice, They'll take a chance again this year though fat's gone down in price...." The ships set out to take the seal. When they get back to St. John's, the sailors hope for good luck and good food
AUTHOR: unknown (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1955 (Doyle-OldTimeSongsAndPoetryOfNewfoundland, 3rd edition)
KEYWORDS: hunting ship travel
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Fowke/Mills/Blume-CanadasStoryInSong, pp. 162-164, "A Noble Fleet of Sealers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle-OldTimeSongsAndPoetryOfNewfoundland, "A Noble Fleet of Sealers" (1 text, 1 tune): pp. 10-11 in the 3rd edition, pp. 15-16 in the 4th edition, pp. 16-17 in the 5th edition
Blondahl-NewfoundlandersSing, pp. 74-75, "A Noble Fleet of Sealers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, pp. 114-115, "A Noble Fleet of Sealers" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Farley Mowat, _Wake of the Great Sealers_, with prints and drawings by David Blackwood, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1973, p. 64, "(no title)" (1 text)
ST FMB162 (Partial)
Roud #4530
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Ferryland Sealer"
cf. "The Old Polina" (tune)
NOTES [1525 words]: Anna Kearney Guigné, in her article on the Doyle songsters, "Kenneth Peacock's Contribution to Gerald S. Doyle's Old-TIme Songs of Newfoundland (1955)" (published in Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Volume 22, No. 1, Summer 2007) attributes this to Gerald S. Doyle himself (p. 123), and it does appear that his 1955 songster was the earliest publication, but she gives no basis for the attribution. Perhaps the best evidence is that described below: that it mostly describes relatively recent ships.
This song bears many resemblances, in the first verse and the melodic pattern, to "The Ferryland Sealer" -- which also derives from Newfoundland. But this piece has a different chorus, and the latter verses are different, so I tentatively distinguish them. If they are related, this is without doubt the newer song, since it mentions steam sealing ships; "The Ferryland Sealer" precedes the steamers.
This is also a very confusing song if you know the earlier, more familiar sealing pieces, because it mentions several names of ships that were famous at the turn of the twentieth century, but puts them under captains who never commanded them. For example, the first ship mentioned here is the Algerine; for the SS Algerine, see "Loss of the S. S. Algerine." If the ship involved were the SS Algerine that would force a date in no later than 1912, when that ship was lost. But the song lists the Algerine's skipper as Wilf Barbour -- a member of a famous family of sealers which also included among others George Barbour ("The Greenland Disaster (I)"), Alpheus Barbour ("Sealer's Song (II)"), and Baxter Barbour ("The Nimrod's Song"). The problem is, "Wilf Barbour" never commanded the SS Algerine (Chafe, pp. 87-88). My first guess was that "Wilf" was an error for "Alf"=Alpheus or perhaps "Will"=William. But neither Alpheus nor William Barbour ever commanded the Algerine either; indeed, no Barbour ever commanded her. The only commander with name anything like "Wilf Barbour" is Will(iam) Bartlett, commander of the Algerine in 1902-1903.
The next ship mentioned, the Viking, lasted longer, but no Captain Barbour commanded the SS Viking in the period that the Algerine was afloat; William Bartlett Senior skippered her 1904-1913, then William Bartlett Junior in 1914-1915, after which William Sr. took her back until 1927. I. Barbour commanded the Viking 1928-1929 (Feltham, p. 154). She blew up in 1931; see "To the Memory of the Late Captain Kennedy."
The SS Newfoundland is the subject of "The Newfoundland Disaster (I)." She was renamed in 1915 after the disaster, and sank the next year. At the time she sank, there had never been a sealing captain John Blackmore (Chafe, pp. 88, 97)
The Terra Nova isn't much of a dating hint; she first went to the ice in 1885 and mostly stayed there until shortly before her loss in World War II, apart from missing 1904-1905 and 1910-1913 to go to the Arctic and Antarctic. But she never had a Captain Charles Kean (Feltham, p. 134). She was, however, commanded by Abram Kean (the greatest of all the Kean family; see "Captain Abram Kean") 1906-1908, 1917-1926, 1932-1933 (and a few other Keans having her briefly in the 1920s).
All those ships were mentioned in earlier songs in Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, which puts its songs in roughly chronological order. You can imagine that I was getting very confused by all those ships and wrong captains. And it got worse when I looked up the Arctic Sealer, because there was no such steamer in the period of the Algerine and the Newfoundland.
I finally realized that the solution is to look at a later stage of the seal fishery, when it was much smaller and less well-known. By the 1940s, the steamers -- and, indeed, the Newfoundland sealing industry itself -- were almost extinct. The original Terra Nova was lost in 1943, leaving only the J. H. Blackmore to go to the ice in 1943, and only the Eagle (for which see "The Ice-Floes") in 1944 (Candow, p. 107). The J. H. Blackmore was the first example of the replacement for the old steamers -- the small "motor vessels," or MVs. And, yes, her captain was the John Blackmore mentioned in this song, who later became the captain of the Newfoundland mentioned in this verse; for more about him, see "The Sinking of the 'Newfoundland.'"
"The appearance of motor vessels sparked a transformation of the industry. Their numbers rose to 11 in 1946, 15 in 1947, and a historic high of 21 in 1948 [Busch, p. 244, says there were 25 in 1948 but may have had a different method of counting]. The rise of the motor vessels broke the St. John's monopoly of the industry" (Candow, p. 108). Not one of the five that sailed in 1945 came from St. John's, and the five together were smaller than the Eagle! (Busch, pp. 243-244). These were the first of the "long liners" that some readers may know, e.g., from Stan Rogers's "Make and Break Harbour." In 1946, twelve companies based in seven different ports sent out thirteen ships, with even more in the years that followed (Busch, p. 244).
So, for instance, an MV Terra Nova went out in 1948, commanded by Wilf Barbour; she was one of six MVs he commanded in his career (the others being Ice Hunger, Algerine, Arctic Prowler, Blue Seal, and Bessie Marie; Winsor. p. 101). There was also a Captain Charles Kean, who commanded the MV Terra Nova as well as the MVs Algerine and Blue Seal (Winsor, p. 104); there is a photo of Charles Kean on p. 73 of Winsor, and a photo of the new Terra Nova on p. 82); there was also an MV Catalina Trader as well as the MV J. H. Blackmore, which might help explain the references to Catalina and John Blackmore in the song (there is a very poor photo of the J. H. Blackmore on p. 80 of Winsor). In 1957, MV Algerine and MV Terra Nova went out, although not under Wilf Barbour; Wilf Barbour (of whom there is a photo on p. 72 of Winsor) commanded the Bessie Marie, with Harold Laite commanding the Algerine and Gus Carter the Terra Nova. The new Algerine was a 338 ton converted tug which had been built in 1943 (Candow, p. 146). I have no data when the MV Arctic Sealer sailed, but one of her captains was William Moss, who lived 1911-1969. And Sid Hill (1888-1961) also commanded her; having made his first voyage as a sealer in the Virginia Lake in 1907, his first command was of the steamer Eagle in 1933. (There was apparently another song about Sid Hill, and the Eagle, preserved in Hill's own family, that has never been printed; two verses are on p. 166 of Ryan-Last, and begin "Come all of you seal hunters and listen unto me, While I'll tell of the spring now in 1933.")
Hill soon was given command the much fancier ships Beothic and Imogene (DictNewfLabr, p. 155), then went on to command the MVs in the 1940s and 1950s. (Ryan/Drake, p. 82;). Among the ships he commanded after World War II were the Arctic Sealer and the Arctic Prowler (DictNewfLabr, p. 155; Winsor, p. 103, says he commanded the MV Arctic Sealer for five years but does not mention the Arctic Prowler).
The description of Hill as the "Sailor's Friend" seems to have been true; Lester Andrews, who sailed under him, declared (a quarter century after Hill's death, so he wasn't buttering up the boss) that "The captains were all good men, but I'm going to speak my mind, and Captain Sidney Hill was my favorite. He had great ideas, and he was a man who could almost read your mind. And he was a great old fellow for getting seals aboard" (Ryan-Last, p. 108). And Lane Watson said, "As far as I'm concerned, the man above couldn't make no better than Captain Sid Hill. I loved him. He was really a gentleman." There is a photo of Hill on p. 73 of Winsor.
Since the MVs/long liners could also catch cod, they seemed ideal for Newfoundland conditions (Busch, p. 244).
But it was a short boom. There were only four MVs in 1950, and no steamers. The numbers bounced around after that, peaking at 12 in 1951, but by 1959, only one MV left; the demand for sealskins was too low to support an industry based in Newfoundland (Candow, p. 109) -- although the Norwegians would keep it up for years, and there were also sealers from Halifax. In 1958, Bowring Brothers, which had been owner of the largest sealing fleet for most of the preceding century, announced that they would bow out of the business, although it was a few more years before they actually made their exit (Candow, p. 110). Sealing as a Newfoundland industry was effectively dead by then. So this song probably dates from around 1950-1952. Since Doyle published it in 1955, it must have been quite new, even if Doyle didn't write it himself.
"Brewis," mentioned at the end, are part of "fish and brewis," a Newfoundand staple: "cod-fish cooked with hard tack or sea biscuit" (StoryKirwinWiddowson, pp. 176-177; "brewis" being specifically bread [or hardtack or biscuit] soaked in boiling fat pottage, made of salt meat" (StoryKirwinWiddowson, p. 65) -- ultimately, it was fish and biscuit cooked with the fish oil and water.
Winsor has photos of the MV Algerine and the Arctic Sealer on p. 79. - RBW
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