Ice Bound Hunting Seals

DESCRIPTION: "The wind was still from the nor'east As we sat down to out humble feast" as the sealers talk of days gone by. They recall happier voyages; finally old "Garge" "Cried out, 'it's the "infarnal" steal -- that's what done it.'"
AUTHOR: probably James Murphy (1868-1931)
EARLIEST DATE: 1978 (Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff)
KEYWORDS: hunting technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, p. 67, "Ice Bound Hunting Seals" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #V44841
NOTES [359 words]: A manuscript text, with no author cited, but thought to be the work of James Murphy.
The Newfoundland seal fishery went back very early in the colony's history, and the hunt was on such a large scale that it soon dramatically reduced the seal population. By the 1850s, the number of seals was falling fast, and the hunt was shifting from small ships to large. In the 1860s, even the large sailing vessels were pushed aside by steam-powered sealers. These took many more seals on a per-ship basis, but only a few dozen sailed each year, carrying crews numbering in the hundreds rather than the dozens. But, because the steamers were so few, many sealers were out of work -- and those who did work lived a very different life. This is presumably a grumble about the change.
The irony of it is, the steamers, because they could move without a wind to power them, were much less likely to get ice bound than the older sailing ships. But it still happened sometimes.
The song lists three captains, all by first name only: "Captain Mick," who is identified by Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff as Mick Fitzgerald, and Captains John and Dan, not identified. Ryan and Ryan/Drake have no mentions of any Captain Fitzgerald, but Chafe, p. 91, lists a Captain T. Fitzgerald who captained the steamer Mastiff in 1877, took only 700 seals, and never commanded another steamer. I suspect this is the "Mick" involved (if Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff are correct in saying his name was Fitzgerald); it was quite common for a successful captain of sailing sealers to try to make the transition to steam -- and fail and lose his job (Ryan, p. 221, or see the notes to "Captain Bill Ryan Left Terry Behind").
Captains John and Dan are, obviously, harder to identify, but a Captain John Hicks commanded the Mastiff in 1872, with only slightly better luck than Fitzgerald (Chafe, p. 91), a Captain John Winsor had a horrid trip in the Mastiff in 1886, and a captain John Dawe had little success in the Iceland in 1880. These seem to be the only steamer captains who are early enough to fit the song, but the three captains were, of course, primarily sailing captains. - RBW
Bibliography

Chafe: Levi George Chafe, Chafe's Sealing Book: A History of the Newfoundland Sealfishery from the Earliest Available Records Down To and Including the Voyage of 1923, third edition, Trade Printers and Publishers, Ltd., 1923 (PDF scan available from Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Ryan: Shannon Ryan, The Ice Hunters: A History of Newfoundland Sealing to 1914, Breakwater Books, 1994
Ryan/Drake: Shannon Ryan, assisted by Martha Drake, Seals and Sealers: A Pictorial History of the Newfoundland Seal Fishery, Breakwater Books, 1987

Last updated in version 5.0
File: RySm067

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