Sealers of Twillingate and New World Island, The

DESCRIPTION: The poet recalls the hardships faced by the sealers of 1862, then turns to the modern hunt, as SPCA planes fly overhead. He warns against actual interference with the hunt, and declares seal hunting both good commerce and a good source of food
AUTHOR: John C. Loveridge
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (Loveridge, Story in Pictures and Poetry of the 1973 Seal Hunt....)
KEYWORDS: hunting animal political nonballad technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ryan/Small-HaulinRopeAndGaff, pp. 150-151, "The Sealers of Twillingate and New World Island" (1 text)
Roud #V44688
NOTES [681 words]: Despite this song's vicious and inflated rhetoric, seal hunting has of course been restricted in the last 30 years -- in part because of opposition from animal rights' groups, but mostly because there is no longer demand for seal products, plus the sealers have destroyed the seal populations, and have been forced to cut back to preserve the herds.
Seals were indeed an important food source to the Newfoundland fishermen -- and even more to the Inuit. According to Bob Bartlett (who should know; see his biography under "Captain Bob Bartlett"), "The seal is the one indispensible animal of the Arctic. The flesh is by no means disagreeable, though it has a general flavor of fish, which constitutes the seal's chief food" (Bartlett, p. 54).
The several mentions of 1862 in the song are interesting. That was not the year Newfoundlanders started taking seals; they had been doing that for many years by then. But "In 1862 the Newfoundland seal hunt entered the steam age. That year, two Scottish steamers participated in the Newfoundland hunt as a complementary activity to the Davis Strait right-whale 'fishery'" (Candow, p. 41). One of those sealers was the Polynia, the inspiration for the song "The Old Polina." The steamers soon drove out the sailing vessels; except for a brief period around World War I when steel ships took a lead role, the wooden steamers, which also carried sail, dominated the seal hunt until the 1940s.
Brian Davies, mentioned in the song as the opponent of sealing, was a Welshman who came to Canada in 1955 and joined the New Brunswick SPCA in 1961. He turned his attention to the seal hunt in 1964, and witnessed it firsthand in 1965. The SPCA founded a Save the Seals fund, and Davies gave up his regular career to oppose it. In 1968, he led a press group from Europe to see the hunt, and the anti-sealing movement began (Candow, pp. 118-119). In 1970, he wrote a book, Savage Luxury: The Slaughter of the Baby Seals (Bush, p. 249). He eventually appeared on David Letterman's television show to argue against sealing (Busch, p. 256). Little wonder that the sealers themselves hated him. He's referred to, with equal distaste, in "Save Our Swilers."
We might mention, incidentally, that even those who opposed sealing often disliked the methods used by Davies. Greenpeace, which in the end did much more to oppose sealing than did Davies, referred to his efforts as a "Bambi cult" because he used the cuteness of baby seals as his main argument (Wright, p. 22).
The bitterness of the Newfoundlanders is shown in the summary on p. 309 of Major: "When founder Brian Davies retired as [head of IFAW, the organization he founded] in 1997, his wage settlement was reported to be $2.5 million. Such profit on the backs of sealers is impossible for any Newfoundlander to stomach, and the anger at the unfairness of it all impossible to suppress." This although Davies was not paid by locals -- Major notes, e.g., that more than half of IFAW's funding came from Britain.
DictNewfLabrador, pp. 203-204, lists six significant Newfoundlanders named "Lundrigan," many associated with Lundrigan's lumber enterprise: Arthur Raymond (1922-), son of William James, president of Lundrigan's 1967-1983; Harold Wilson (1928-), brother of Arthur, his successor as president of Lundrigan's; James (fl. 1820), who was apparently unrelated and got in trouble for minor debts; John Howard (1939-), a teacher who became an MP for Gander/Twilingate in 1968 and served until 1974, then spent several years in the Newfoundland cabinet; Joseph Roche (1948-), an NHL player; and William James (1901-1986), founder of Lundrigan's and father of Arthur R. and Harold W.
I would assume the "Lundrigan" of the song is John Howard Lundrigan, since he was was in Ottawa in 1973. But it's pretty silly to think that one MP could stop a law!
The song is supposed to commemorate the firm of E. J. Linfield. Google Books has an account of the firm of Edward J. Linfield, a general merchandiser in Twillingate, founded 1888, but I can find no references to the firm being active today. - RBW
Bibliography

Bartlett: Robert A. Bartlett (as set down by Ralph T. Hale), The Karluk's Last Voyage (originally published 1916 as The Last Voyage of the Karluk; I used the 2001 Cooper Square expedition with a new introduction by Edward E. Leslie)
Busch: Briton Cooper Busch, The War Against the Seals: A History of the North American Seal Fishery, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1985
Candow: James E. Candow, Of Men and Seals: A History of the Newfoundland Seal Hunt, Canadian Parks Service, Environment Canada, 1989
DictNewfLabrador: (Robert H. Cuff, managing editor), Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador Biography, Harry Cuff Publications, 1990
Major: Kevin Major, As Near to Heaven by Sea: A History of Newfoundland & Labrador, 2001 (I use the 2002 Penguin Canada edition)
Wright: Guy Wright, Sons & Seals: A Voyage to the Ice, ISER (Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland), 1984

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