Ferryland Sealer, The (The Sealers) [Laws D10]

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, our schooner and our sloop in (Ferryland/the Pool) they do lie, They are already rigged to be bound for the ice...." The singer describes the provisioning of the ship, the path she follows, the work of sealing. He rejoices as they return home
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine)
KEYWORDS: hunting ship travel work
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf) US(NE)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Laws D10, "The Sealers"
Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, pp. 324-326, "The Sealers" (1 text)
Fowke/MacMillan-PenguinBookOfCanadianFolkSongs 16, "The Ferryland Sealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
Peacock, pp. 120-121, "Ferryland Sealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, pp. 22-23, "Ferryland Sealer" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 613, SEALERS FERRSEAL
Roud #4533
RECORDINGS:
Leonard Hulan, "Ferryland Sealer" (on PeacockCDROM)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "A Noble Fleet of Sealers"
NOTES [2223 words]: Laws, who knew only the Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine version of this, used their title "The Sealers." I have filed it under "The Ferryland Sealer," because that version is much better known today. It's not clear that this was always so. Although "The Ferryland Sealer" version has been published in several books, it appears that the source of all the printed versions was Leonard Hulan.
[Peacock also has his version from Leonard Hulan. However, he claims a similar "variant" of "this fine old sealing song... was noted from George Decker in Rocky Harbour." Of course, Decker may have learned his version from Hulan who lives about 85 miles as the crow flies up the west coast from Decker. - BS]
The song has some slight similarities to "A Noble Fleet of Sealers," but that seems to be to a separate piece.
The likeliest explanation is that "The Ferryland Sealer" is a localized version of the somewhat more generic "The Sealers" [Laws D10], which has the same four middle verses but is not as strongly localized and refers to a different ship. Someone -- perhaps Hulan, though I doubt it -- took "The Sealers" and customized it for Ferryland. Decker might well have learned "The Sealers" and perhaps picked up a few of the "Ferryland" words.
Hulan was locally known as a songwriter as well as a singer, although the only song credited to him in the Index is "Downey's Our Member." Kearley, p. 16, says that he was still remembered near his home some thirty years after his death: "Leonard Hulan is a legend on this part o the Island. The Hulans, of Jersey descent, were one of the first resident families on the West Coast. Leonard lived in Jeffreys and was renowned for his ability to strike up songs, a capella, about local people, places and events. Like many, he farmed and fished. Unlike many, he kept oxen. Ruby Gillam remembers him as a good-humoured man.... He made frequent household visits on both sides of Crabbes and was always ready to sing."
Although Hulan was known as a songwriter, there is no reason to think he was responsible for this song. For starters, it's about a town on the east coast of Newfoundland, not the west, so Hulan had no connection with the town of Ferryland. Plus, although it was not collected until 1960, there is good reason to believe that this song is at least a century older than that, making it one of the oldest surviving sealing songs. There are several reasons for thinking this.
For starters, Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, who picked up the song in the 1920s, understood it to be sixty or so years old, which would put it in the 1860s, or a century or so before Hulan.
Another reason for thinking it early is the fact that the sealer (at least in the Hulan version) comes from Ferryland. Not Fairyland, we should note -- Ferryland is a small town on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, about halfway down the Avalon Peninsula. By the late nineteenth century, there would have been no sealers sailing from there, because there was no way for the small towns to finance the expeditions: "Marine-resource depletion was especially evident in the seal hunt.... By the 1860s, the old schooner hunt of the outports had given way to larger... steam-driven vessels which could penetrate deep into the ice packs in pursuit of the remaining herds. Such steamers required capital beyond the means of most outport employers, and the ownership of the industry transferred from the outports to St. John's" (Cadigan, pp. 137-138). "The two major sealing firms in the colony -- Ridleys and Munns -- had invested so heavily in sailing craft that they could not shift to steam very easily. In St. John's, on the other hand, merchants were not so hampered" (Ryan, p. 202), so the small towns lost their fleets. The change didn't happen instantly -- for a while, a few steamers sailed from ports like Harbor Grace, but they soon gave it up. "By 1896, the entire steam fleet [of sealers] was based in St. John's" (Candow, p. 43). Even before that, Ferryland and the outports on the Avalon Peninsula were out of the business.
This change also reduced the number of ships. In the early days, there were hundreds of small craft sealing -- peaking in 1857 at about 400 (Busch, p. 48). By 1900, only about twenty ships, all large steamers, would go out each year. (There were still people who would go out and take seals on the ice near their homes -- the "land-based" hunt -- but this clearly is not what is being described in this song.)
The fact that the sealing ships in the songs are a schooner and a sloop affirms the early-to-mid-nineteenth-century dating -- the ships were sailing vessels, and so preceded the steam sealers. Indeed, they probably preceded the sailing brigs that had taken over the bulk of the trade by about 1860 (Busch, p. 52). As early as 1820, schooners were being replaced by square-rigged ships that, although less maneuverable, were faster and so could do a better job of pushing through the ice (Ryan, p. 125).
Ferryland certainly could not have supplied enough sealers to crew a steamer. Even a brig might have been difficult, given that by 1900 the town had a population of just 535 (O'Flaherty, p. 211).
Additionally, no steamer named either William or Nancy ever went to the ice (Chafe, p. 105). There were lots of sailing ships with those names in the early nineteenth century, although I've yet to find one from Ferryland. There was a ship named Nancy lost in 1829 (Ryan, p. 285), but she was out of St. John's. In 1834, Thomas Ryan commanded a 56 ton Nancey (note spelling) with a complement of 14 out of St. John's (Ryan, p. 472). A Nancy under Captain Cole sailed from somewhere in Conception Bay in 1835 (84 tons, 21 men; Ryan, p. 476); so did one under under Captain Kelly (75 tons, 20 men; Ryan, p. 473). I assume this is the same Nancy as that which sailed from Harbour Grace in 1836 under Patrick Kelly, since she was also 75 tons (although she had 23 men in that year; Ryan, p. 480). Harbour Grace also sent out a 94 ton Nancy under Matthew Hudson in that year; she carried 24 men (Ryan, p. 480). In 1838, St. John's hosted a Nancy under G. Hudson (56 tons, 16 men; Ryan, p. 482). In 1853, there was a sealer Nancy supplied by L. O'Brien & Co.; her captain was named Moore, and she had 30 men; she was a small ship of 74 tons (Ryan, p. 459).
On April 13, 1847, a sealer William was caught in ice, but she too appears to have been out of St. Johns (Ryan, p. 140). Perhaps the same William (?) took in 5000 seals in 1852 in the "Spring of the Wadhams" (FelthamNortheast, p. 53); it appears this ship, under Captain Withicomb, was 116 tons and had a crew of 43 (Ryan, p. 459). A William of 133 tons, with 68 men, sailed from Brigus under S. Whelan in 1869 (Ryan, p. 490), and one of 105 tons under Captain Stone sailed from Catalina in that year with 60 men (Ryan, p. 490).
Conception Bay had several sealers named William in 1833; Captain Power commanded one of 57 tons with 18 men and Captain Green one of 123 tons with 27 aboard (Ryan, p. 474). Harbour Grace had a sealer named William in 1853, with 91 tons and 36 men, commanded by someone named Bransfield, and a second William, of 85 tons and 33 men commanded by Murphy. Conception Bay in 1835 had a 73 ton William, with 21 men, under Captain Snow. Presumably the same William (73 tons, 26 men, under Edward Snow) sailed from Brigus in 1838.
This ignores several listings of a ship Willaim (sic.) in Ryan (e.g. one such sailed from Carbonear in 1869; Ryan, p. 489, although perhaps they should count too. And I've omitted ships with names like William the King.
Also, one of the last sailing brigs to go to the seal fishery was named William; Ryan, pp. 163-164, prints a newspaper report from 1883 which read, "The brig William, Capt. Stephen Whelan arrived at this port from the Northern icefield about noon yesterday with between six and seven hundred old seals.... The steamers took the lead and kept it all spring, and as they passed through the different patches of hoods and harps everything in the shape of a seal was picked up. Verily, the days of our sailing fleet are numbered." I'm guessing this refers to the Brigantine William acquired by Bowring's in the 1870s (Keir, p. 133), but she wasn't a schooner or sloop.
To be sure, the ship in the Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine version is the Tiger, and there was in fact a sealing steamer by that name. Chafe, p. 104, reports that the Tiger sailed from 1878 to 1884, being lost in the latter year, but in those seven years she took just 18,702 seals -- a pretty miserable total for a steamer, not likely to be commemorated in song. In any case, the Tigernever took a number close to 900 seals.
There was also a Tigress, but she sailed only from 1873-1875, with only slightly better luck (13,746 total seals) and never had a year with a total close to 900. The Tigress was memorable for her part in rescuing the Polaris expedition (briefly mentioned in the notes to "Hurrah for Baffin's Bay", but she never went sealing again.
As early as 1832, the sealers of Ferryland were selling their seals in St. John's (Ryan, p. 127), although that certainly isn't proof that the song dates from pre-1832.
The mentions of Cape Spear (outside St. John's) and Cape Broyle (just north of Ferryland) affirm that the voyage was from Ferryland, not St. John's.
Steering a course "east northeast" from Ferryland is a bit odd, since the "Front" (the main sealing patch) was north of Newfound and the secondary "Gulf" patch was west, but probably the ship was heading out to sea and would then turn north.
The line "some more they were firing and a-missing of their loads" also would make more sense at an early date. Gunners initially were paid more than other sealers (Chafe, p. 25), but there were fewer of them as time passed. Shooting seals in the water didn't work; they sank. Even if shot on ice, they might try to escape into the water -- and sink (Busch, p. 47). It was easier to go after the young -- but it took some time for the sealers to make that standard policy. Use of guns was generally a fall-back, used only if the hunt for young seals failed to bring in enough pelts (Candow, pp. 35-36). And the fact that the shooters in the song were missing their targets implies the early date when they used long muzzle-loaders to hunt (Busch, p. 47); better weapons became available starting around the 1850s.
Finally, the boast of "nine hundred fine scalps in the hold" (properly "sculps"; a "sculp" was the standard name for skin plus fat) clearly indicates a small-scale hunt. By the 1880s, a haul of less than a thousand seal was a pure and simple disaster. Even a brig with a crew of less than fifty could take in five thousand sculps (Busch, p. 54), and the steamers needed more than that to make the trip worthwhile. Taking some samples from FelthamSteamers: The Commodore averaged 15,486 seals per year from 1871 to 1883 (p. 31); the Diana, despite a disastrous year in which she managed just 476 seals, averaged 10,904 per year from 1892-1921 (p. 41); the Eagle averaged 15,816 per year from 1905-1949 (p. 47); the Imogene fully 35,643 in 1929-1940 (p. 70); the Neptune, over an astounding career from 1873-1941, pulled in an average of 18,647 per year; even the Ranger, one of the earliest and smallest, averaged 12,932 seals per year from 1872-1941 (pp. 115-116). This song is a tale of retail rather than wholesale sealing.
If the William was the one commanded by Murphy, it may have inspired more than just this song. Chafe, p. 35, tells this story:
"A celebrated old character was John Murphy an Irishman who not only couldn't read or write but couldn't speak English except a few words. Still by hard work and perseverance he was successful and commanded his own vessel the 'William,' about one hundred tons, at the seal fishery. He couldn't remember the names of the ropes, so he had rags tied on them -- 'Pull the Red Rag', 'Let go the Rag' was his orders to his men.
"It was the custom as many of us remember to have every flag flying and the crew firing 'feue de joy' as the ship came up the Harbor.
"As she came into Harbor Grace -- He called to the gunners -- 'Shoot the (R. C.) Chapel.' Then as he passed the Point of Beach -- 'Shoot Ridley,' his suppliers, and his next order as they were passing his own house -- 'Shoot my Wife.'" (According to Keir, pp. 124-125, "shoot" was Murphy's mispronunciation of "salute.")
Believe as much of that as you want.
The word "Southern" in the first verse is often italicized, as if it were a ship name. I can find no reference to a sealer by that name, although there were so many small sealing schooners in the 1840s and 1850s that that means very little. But I suspect it should not be italicized. Rather, "Southern" is, I think, short for "Southern Shore" -- i.e. the east coast of the Avalon Peninsula. Ferryland is right in the middle of that region.
A few specialized terms:
"A rally" is "a run after seals on the ice by a group of sealers" (Young, p. 142).
"The jam" is the ice-pack, where the young seals rested, so-called (I believe) because the ships could find the ice jamming against their sides.
A "bat" is "a club with an iron hook and spike used to kill and take seals" (Young, p. 30). Compare a "gaff." - RBW
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File: LD10

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