THE SEAL AND LABRADOR COD FISHERIES OF NEWFOUNDLAND
Shannon Ryan
Canada's early development was determined by two basic staples: fish and fur. Soon these were replaced or at least surpassed by other products including timber, wheat and later, minerals. Unlike the rest of Canada, the tenth province, Newfoundland, was exclusively dependent upon the sea until the end of the nineteenth century and heavily dependent upon it during the twentieth. Nevertheless harvesting the sea was not a uniform way of life, neither economically or socially, for it involved a variety of different industries and activities. Two of the most important were the seal and the Labrador cod fisheries of the northeast coast of the Island. The former has been described by George Allan England, an American author, as "the greatest hunt in the world" while Norman Duncan, a Canadian writer, has described the latter as a "great lottery of hope and fortune" employing feats of seamanship "not elsewhere equalled."
From the beginning of the nineteenth century until recently, thousands of Newfoundlanders went to sea to harvest the seal herds and the Labrador cod fish. The whole northeast coast of the Island was heavily dependent on these two industries although a substantial inshore cod fishery and a lesser bank fishery were also important. (The remainder of the Island was almost exclusively dependent on the inshore and bank fisheries.) The migratory seal and Labrador cod fisheries created large prosperous outports independent of the capital, St. John's. The collapse of these industries has resulted in changes in the social and economic structures of the outports and their considerable decline.
The rich stocks of cod fish off the coast of Newfoundland first attracted European fishermen in the early sixteenth century, and during the following hundred years ships from England, France, Spain and Portugal came annually to the Island to fish. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Spanish and Portuguese fisheries had been practically eliminated, leaving England and France as the two chief producers and competitors. Both nations were aware that the cod fishery was an ideal activity for the training of sailors who could be used in the navy in time of war. The seventeenth century was an era of colonization for these two nations. The French occupied the Bay of Fundy, southern Newfoundland, and the St. Lawrence River valley, while the English established colonies along the Atlantic seaboard and in eastern Newfoundland. By now fur had joined fish as a major resource with the French trading up the St. Lawrence and elsewhere, and the English trading in Albany, N.Y. after 1666 and in Hudson Bay after 1670.
The competition between England and France for fur and fish contributed to the growing commercial and diplomatic tensions between these nations in Europe and throughout the world. The first major wars to result (1689-1713) ended in France being excluded from settlement in Newfoundland and Acadia but retaining the liberty to catch and dry fish on that part of the Newfoundland coast from Cape Bonavista northward to Point Riche. This became known as the "French Shore". In 1763 New France became an English colony and France acquired the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland's south coast, primarily as a shelter for her fishing fleet. In 1783 the boundaries of the French Shore were altered to include the area from Cape St. John northward to Cape Ray and this remained the case until 1904 when France exchanged her rights in Newfoundland for concessions elsewhere.
For the markets - Southern Europe, the West Indies and later Brazil - each fish was split so that it would lie flat, then covered with salt, stored, and finally dried in the sun and wind. The finished product was very durable but varied from light salted, hard dried to heavy salted, soft dried. A lesser amount of salt allowed the moisture of the fish to be reduced to a lower level, but this type of fish had to be dried as soon as all the salt was absorbed. On the other hand heavy salted fish could be dried at any time. The English, possibly because they did not have access to sufficient supplies of salt, produced mainly light salted, hard dried fish while the French produced, for the most part, heavy salted fish which could be taken back to Europe for drying - a situation that has led some to suggest settlement in Newfoundland was less important to the French than to the English. The French fishery by the nineteenth century had developed into three branches: an inshore fishery on the French shore; a growing fishery at St. Pierre and Miquelon; and a bank fishery in which the fish was transported from the fishing banks directly to France or to French possessions.
The early fisheries in Newfoundland were exclusively migratory, employing ships and crews from Europe. The fleet came out in the spring taking up stations on a first come, first served basis. Each fishing ship was unloaded and either hauled up on the beach or anchored in the harbour. The crews then built living quarters, stages for processing and storing the fish and other items, and flakes or low platforms on which the fish could be dried. This piece of shoreline with its buildings was generally referred to as a "fishing room". (A larger fishing room was called a "plantation" and the owner who resided permanently on it was referred to as a "planter".) After the buildings were put in order, the crews got ready their fishing boats which could carry three to five men. Therefore, while the ship was used for transportation, the fishing boat of 20 to 25 feet was used for catching fish. In the fall the crews would return to Europe with their catches. Eventually captains found it advantageous to leave caretakers on their "fishing rooms", for these premises became more and more time consuming and expensive to replace as the forests were pushed farther back. These caretakers and the early attempts at colonization resulted in a growing resident English population and a resident English fishery. The cost of a fishing ship was beyond the reach of many individuals who, nevertheless, had sufficient capital to acquire a small fishing room on the Island.
Each of these individuals owned a fishing boat or two or perhaps even more and hired approximately five servants per boat (hired men were referred to as servants). Each year the boat owners, their servants, boats, gear, supplies and salt were transported across the Atlantic by the fishing ships. In the fall their catch was transported to market by others as well - for a fee, of course. The fishing ships were now able to make extra money by transporting these additional passengers and freight. This branch of the industry became known as the "bye boat" fishery. After 1715 an English bank fishery was developed and the bank ships became the chief freighters for the bye boat fishery. There were no clear cut lines, however, between the various branches of the industry. A fishing ship owner might become a resident, temporary or permanent, or, because of high insurance costs among other reasons, he might become a bye boat keeper during time of war or depression. A bye boat keeper might for a variety of reasons stay in Newfoundland for an extended period and thus be classified as a resident while prosperous residents often wintered and retired in England. Residents who suffered severe financial setbacks usually moved on to New England to be replaced by others.
The British Government was reluctant to see Newfoundland become a settled colony like New England for fear that a Newfoundland resident fishery would replace the English migratory one as had been the case in New England. This would harm certain segments of English commerce and industry and would also mean the loss of a major training ground for the Royal Navy. War however was very destructive to the migratory fishery as enemy warships, privateers, and Royal Navy press gangs took their toll of vessels and men. Consequently, in time of war, the resident popuiation and fishery usually increased as competition from the migratory fishermen declined. By 1815 this situation had been repeated so many times that the resident fishery had acquired almost absolute control over the English fishery around Newfoundland. Moreover, by now, the Industrial Revolution was lessening Britain's interest in the fisheries and later the introduction of steam into the Navy reduced the need for trained sailors. Newfoundland became a Crown Colony in 1824 and acquired Representative Government in 1832, but in reality the change from fishing station to colony had occurred during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In the interval Newfoundlanders had expanded the resident fishery to include two new industries: the seal and Labrador cod fisheries.
In 1763 the coast of Labrador was placed under the jurisdiction of the Naval Governor of Newfoundland, and with official encouragement, an English fishery quickly developed on the southern part of that coast. The emergence of a Labrador fishery can be attributed to the decline in the number of available fishing rooms on the Island and to the British Government's decision to develop a purely migratory fishery in the Labrador area to increase its reservoir of sailors. Naturally, it was quickly realized that buildings and other types of construction could not remain free to all comers and inevitably the area was abandoned although English and Jersey firms established themselves in the region on a permanent basis. Newfoundland's Labrador fishery however did not originate at this time but grew out of local developments that occurred on the Island as a result of the British-French wars of 1793-1815.
During the early years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, particularly after Spain joined the French coalition in 1796, prices and demand for fish declined with the closure of the Spanish market. With the French invasion of Spain and Portugal in 1807 this situation changed, for violent revolts broke out and Britain was invited by patriots from both countries to intercede in the Iberian peninsula. In 1808 a British army landed in Portugal and for the next six years Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) led his forces and their allies against the French until the peninsula was freed from Napoleon's control. The Peninsula War re-opened the Spanish market (the Portuguese market had not been closed) to British exports and particularly to dried cod fish. It was easily transported inland by pack animals or even by men (unlike pork, beef, and herring, salted in barrels) and could be preserved in the hottest temperatures. Furthermore dried fish was consumed not only by the Spanish and Portuguese but also by the British troops. To fill this demand, reflected in rising prices, Newfoundland's production of fish increased and the colony experienced prosperity in the years around the turn of the century. Exports rose as follows:
*Year Quantity in Quintals
1797 318621
1801 314917
1803 582849
1813 912183
1894 947811
1815 1180661
*figures unavailable for certain years Note: A quintal equals 112 lbs or approximately 51 kilograms
Almost all of this was produced by residents. Prices for fish, which varied from 14 to 16 shillings per quintal before the war and had declined during its early years, rocketed to a high of at least 40 shillings by 1812-1814. Wages rose dramatically; fish splitters for instance, who were earning $30 to $32 per season in 1804, were paid as much as $140 for the same work in 1814. The cost of living also increased as bread prices (per cwt of 112 lbs) rose from 20 to 30 shillings in 1804 to 70 to 80 shillings in 1813. But prices did not keep pace with wages and consequently there was a substantial improvement in the standard of living which, among other things, encouraged immigration.
The cod fish production fell into the hands of Newfoundland residents because of the French wars and the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814. The French fishery was eliminated and the fledgling Norwegian and lcelandic salt cod trade ceased as a result of Britain's blockade of the Danish Kingdom. The United States of America and Nova Scotia were never major competitors in Europe for they concentrated on the West Indian markets. The English migratory fishery, which immediately before the war produced over 55 percent of the total English-Newfoundland catch, withdrew from the fishery to avoid enemy warships and privateers and British naval press gangs. The same problems affected the Jersey migratory fishery in the Bay of Chaleur which was also a producer for the European market. The Newfoundland fishermen weren't exposed to the costs and hazards of crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic. Consequently, while some trading ships were lost to the enemy, potential profits were such, after 1808, that shipping was not a problem. Furthermore by this time, twenty years of almost continuous war had destroyed the migratory fishery and Newfoundland residents were the only ones in a position to take control of production and, to a lesser extent, marketing.
Rising demand and prices resulted in larger profits which were reinvested particularly around St. John's and Conception Bay, and the increase in real wages stimulated immigration to these areas. English and Jersey ships coming to Newfoundland had always stopped in southern Ireland for provisions and servants, and it was natural for many Irish to leave the rapidly deteriorating situation at home and emigrate. Regular immigrant ships operating under the Passenger Act of 1803 were subject to regulations which increased costs and, therefore, the fares they charged. British ships bound for Newfoundland were classified as fishing ships and were outside these controls. Consequently the number of passengers carried and the facilities provided were determined only by the fear and humanity of the owners. For the most part this meant that fishing ships to Newfoundland were desperately over-crowded, inadequately supplied with food and water and lacking all medical provisions. Fares were often as low as ten shillings per person with the emigrant providing his own food and water on a voyage of very uncertain length. By 1812 nearly 2,000 emigrants per year were coming to Newfoundland and this rose to a high of almost 6,000 by 1815. Newfoundland's total population increased from about 20,000 in 1804 to over 30,000 by 1812 and 40,000 by 1815. Most of these newcomers had no capital or experience in the fishery and all the good fishing rooms had long since been occupied around St. John's and Conception Bay. They were forced to build their dwellings away from the sea and became servants for the larger planters and merchants. The buoyant returns from the fish trade prompted merchants and planters to build ships and send crews for the fishing season to less crowded parts of the coast, particularly that part of the now vacant French Shore which they referred to as the "North Shore". There they could fish unhindered by neighbours and use the coves and harbours to dry their catch. In 1802 (the earliest figures available) the Governor reported that there were 47 ships and 435 men engaged in the fishery on the North Shore. By 1811 these numbers had risen to 107 and 717 respectively. Governor Gower reported in 1806 that the planters from Conception Bay had established quite a cod fishery on the North Shore, which was a matter of concern to him because he knew they would be forced to leave when the French returned. There is no doubt that some of these vessels ventured farther north to the Labrador coast in search of fish, but it seems they only did so in small numbers. With the signing of the peace treaty in 1815, the French returned to their former harbours. By the early 1820s they appear to have rebuilt their fishery in this area, for the Newfoundland North Shore fishery closed shortly after 1820 and Newfoundland fishermen were pushed farther north to Labrador. By the late 1820s the annual migratory fishery from Newfoundland to the Labrador was an established activity. (The other British North American colonies also participated in this fishery to some extent as did the New England fishing fleet.)
The Labrador fishery proved to be a rather expensive proposition. Transportation costs were high, the season was shorter than on most parts of the Island, the fish required more salt and the market price for Labrador cures was 20 percent to 25 percent less than received for hard dried, light salted Newfoundland fish. Fish were plentiful on the Labrador however and by using more salt, the curing process was less tedious, allowing more time for catching and greater per capita production. One main advantage of the Labrador fishery was that the same men and ships could also take part in the seal fishery - another enterprise which grew out of the Napoleonic War period.
Although seals had always been harvested by landsmen whenever the ice drifted close to shore (generally north of Bonavista), and while some were caught in nets set for that purpose, sealing was a highly unpredictable source of income. By 1800 it had been discovered that the young seals could be harvested shortly after their birth at the beginning of March provided ships went out to the breeding grounds among the ice floes. No longer did men have to wait until the ice came into their harbours carrying scattered seals; no longer were they forced to depend on guns and nets and wind and tide. During March ships set out for the ice fields where the seals were to be found in the tens of thousands. Helpless and immobile, the young were clubbed to death with gaffs as they lay on the ice, although guns were still used for old seals and for the young later in the season when they began to take to the water. Animals and fish provided the bulk of the industrial world's oil at this time and the young seals contained a choice, delicate fat for fine quality oil. The oil and the less valuable skins were shipped to England. During the Napoleonic War, the annual value of the industry's exports ranged between 520,000 and 560,000. It was not a large industry compared with the dried cod trade where exports usually exceeded 600,000 annually. But the industry became established and, while prosecuted initially on a small scale with vessels of only 30 to 60 tons carrying ten to fifteen men each, it was to grow prodigiously in the following decades. In 1818 a harvest of 165,622 seals helped lift Newfoundland out of a post war depression and the expansion of the seal industry began. By 1822 production reached 368,336 and by 1831 output had reached 601,742 seals. Seal oil exports increased from 1,397 tons in 1815 to an average of over 7,500 tons by 1833. During 1830 and 1831 dried cod exports were valued at ú453,000 and ú360,000 respectively, while seal exports were worth approximately ú159,000 and ú197,000. Production increased somewhat during the following years but a plateau was reached by 1845. This plateau, with many wide fluctuations, continued until the 1860s when a decline became apparent. The decline, due to overharvesting, accelerated after 1880 and exports of seal products during the ten year period ending in 1900 were only about one-third as valuable as they were for the ten year period ending in 1860.
Once established the seal industry provided extensive employment for large numbers of ships and men. In 1827, for example, it employed 290 ships and 5,418 men and by 1832 some 407 and 8,649 respectively. In 1833 St. John's, the capital, sent 110 ships and 2,536 men; Conception Bay 205 and 4,526; Trinity Bay 25 and 542; and there were 19 ships and 379 men from other ports for a total of 357 ships and 7,983 men. By 1848 the number of vessels employed was about the same but they were bigger and carried larger crews. In that year St. John's sent 96 ships and 3,215 men, while in Conception Bay, Brigus sent 66 ships and 2,111 men; Carbonear 54 and 1,672; Harbour Grace 51 and 1,684; all other ports sent 74 and 2,123 for a total of 341 ships and 10,805 men. The peak was reached in 1857 when 370 ships and 13,600 men went to the ice. In 1863 two steamers were introduced to the ice fields and this marked the beginning of the changeover from sail to steam. The relatively powerful and flexible steamers were more productive than the sailing vessels, and by 1873 the St. John's sealing fleet contained seventeen steamers, while only one sailed from the smaller rival port of Harbour Grace. In 1886 three steamers carrying 576 men made up the complete Harbour Grace sealing fleet while St. John's sent sixteen steamers and 3,511 men. The increased capital and operating expenses involved in the use of steam ships had forced the other ports out of the business. In 1894 Munn & Company of Harbour Grace went bankrupt and St. John's emerged as the sole centre of the much reduced seal fishery.
By the late 1820s the Labrador fishery had developed two distinct branches. The floater fishery consisted of schooners that moved along the Labrador coast following the fish. The crews lived on and fished from the vessel, salting their fish in the hold of the ship. This fish was usually brought back to the Island to be cured although sometimes it was cured on the Labrador coast. The floaters came from the northeast coast, generally north of Conception Bay. The other branch of the Labrador industry, the stationer fishery, consisted of men who owned fishing rooms on the Labrador coast and who fished in small boats from their premises on shore. "Stationers", for the most part, came from Conception Bay and each stationer hired five or six men on wages or shares and a girl to cook, who travelled to and from the Labrador as passengers on the coaster and floater schooners. Some stationers carried on family opeations with the whole family traveling to the Labrador, but this was not usual for most depended on the family to look after the field crops and livestock during the summer. Occasionally a man would be a combined floater-stationer; he would transport stationers on his schooner (which he owned or hired from a merchant) and would operate a "room" on the coast from which he could fish and dry his catch. Many of these floater-coaster-stationers came from Conception Bay where there was money to be made transporting passengers, supplies, gear, salt, and fish for the stationery fishery. In 1867, ninety such vessels with full cargoes of freight and passengers left Harbour Grace, the principal outport of the stationer fishery, bound for the Labrador coast.
The high cost structure of the Labrador fishery was no burden during the Napoleonic wars, but with subsequent weakening of demand and prices, the industry was less competitive and prosperous. Consequently the fortunes of the Labrador fishery and the northern outports that prosecuted it became tied very closely to those of the sealing industry. The St. John's Chamber of Commerce in 1834 pointed out that the Labrador fishery derived its value chiefly from the employment it gave the sealing ships and men after the seal fishery was over. In Harbour Grace in 1867, for example, of the fifty ships from that port engaged in the seal fishery, thirty-six also took part in the Labrador fishery after the sealing voyage was over, while most of the fourteen sealing ships which did not sail to Labrador in June and July went later with supplies and trade goods and were used to transport the dried cod directly to market or back to Harbour Grace for export. Consequently the decline of the seal fishery which began in the 1860s and accelerated after 1880 had a serious effect on the economics of the Labrador fishery of the northern outports.
Disaster struck during the last quarter of the century. The Harbour Grace Labrador fleet averaged eighty-one ships of 80 tons each during 1866-1870; by 1896-1900 this fleet had shrunk to an average of thirty-seven ships averaging 53 tons. Similarly, during 1867-1870 an average of about 4,000 people went to the Labrador from Harbour Grace and by 1898-1900 this had declined to about 1,100 annually. Outport fishermen and sealers were now forced to travel to St. John's for employment and this trend, which was facilitated by the building of the railway across the Island, reinforced the domination of St. John's over the political, economic, and commercial life of the colony. The northern outports which had been semi-independent city states began to stagnate. The stationers continued to travel back and forth to the Labrador but now they became more and more dependent on steamers sent out by the merchants or the government in St. John's, although sailing ships continued to be used in the Labrador, coastal, and foreign trades for many decades. The declining seal fishery meant that fewer men could "go to the ice" and the centralization of the seal fishery in St. John's resulted in a number of auxiliary industries being lost to the outports. Conception Bay was most seriously affected with the population of Harbour Grace declining from 14,727 people in 1884 to 12,671 in 1901; Carbonear fell from 6,206 to 5,024, and Port de Grave from 8,698 to 7,445 in the same period. This collapse did not occur without considerable upheaval, violent and non-violent, but by the end of the century, Newfoundland, for better or for worse, was entering a new era. The end of the nineteenth century thus brought with it several changes in the economic, social and even political development of the northern ports.
With the virtual end of the seal industry in these areas many people went elsewhere to work but returned periodically to their homes. Migration to the Boston area became very popular where fishing began much earlier in the spring and lasted until much later in the fall than on the northeast coast of the Island and Labrador. Work on the docks and dredges in Boston was also attractive and compared with Newfoundland and even Canada, the wages were good. During this period, according to one gentleman who lived in Boston from 1903 to 1912, "Boston was the home of Newfoundlanders." Other people worked on the Canadian mainland particularly in the mines around Sydney, Nova Scotia. At home Newfoundland was beginning to industrialize. The railway was completed across the Island in 1896 and new branch lines were built and older ones extended. Iron ore mines opened on Bell Island in 1895 and during the early years of the century pulp and paper mills opened in Corner Brook and Grand Falls and lead and zinc mines opened at Buchans. Thus, a new kind of social and economic order developed. The Labrador fishermen became part-time fishermen, loggers, miners, construction and maintenance workers on the railway and even migratory workers in Canada and U.S.A.; the Labrador fishery itself survived only by adjusting to these new realities. A fishermen's union and political party arose on the northeast coast in response to the volatile situation. The decline of entrepreneurs in Conception Bay and the building of the railway had resulted in the integration of the Conception Bay economic system into that of St. John's so that the union's strength remained to the north of this area. This new movement was able to force some concessions from St. John's but it did not have the staying power to survive World War I and the post war depression. Consequently domination from the capital continued regardless of the collapse of Newfoundland's Dominion government in the 1930s.
The seal fishery was by no means dead, but it was dying. During the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, average annual exports of sealskins exceeded 400,000. Around the turn of the century however the annual average was about 250,000 and by the decade ending in 1929, the annual average was 145,000. The number of men employed declined even more drastically from over 13,000 in the 1850s to less than 2,000 in the 1920s. Getting employment as a sealer or a "berth to the ice," as it was called, became very difficult, but some succeeded occasionally. A friendly clergyman, merchant or politician usually had a few berths at his disposal. The steam fleet also underwent changes. The wooden steamer of 2 to 500 tons predominated by the end of the century but beginning in 1906, iron steamers were introduced which were larger and could break the ice with their own weight. The largest was the Stephano of 2,140 tons followed by the Florizel of 1,980 tons, both owned by Bowring Brothers Ltd. of St. John's. Between 1906 and 1914 Newfoundland had a very fine fleet of sealing ships and ice breakers - about twenty ironclad and wooden walls. The cost of these ships was high however and the sealing industry involved work for only a month or two; it was found that the ships could not be operated profitably during the remainder of the year (unlike the old sailing ships which were used for both sealing and in the Labrador fishery). Because of this the fleet was disposed of after the outbreak of World War One. The Stephano, the largest vessel ever to prosecute the seal fishery, was torpedoed by a German U Boat off New York in 1916 and the Florizel was wrecked on the Newfoundland coast in 1918 while plying the passenger trade between St. John's and New York. By the 1920s the fleet was reduced to eight or ten old wooden walls and during the 1940s the last of this old fleet was withdrawn completely from the seal fishery. Throughout the 1950s smaller motor vessels engaged in the seal fishery but the annual harvest was under 50,000 seals. Landsmen continued to take some seals as they had always done and by the 1960s and 70s small longliners were being used as well as a few motor vessels. In 1975, for instance, landsmen using longliners and other small boats caught 45,348 and motor vessels over 150 tons caught 32,779 for a total of 78,127 seals.
The Labrador fishery continued into the twentieth century. It survived the post World War I depression and it survived the world wide depression of the 1930s for, as one informant put the matter: "every spring the men had some place to go." It survived adversity but it could not survive prosperity. During the 1940s major military establishments were built in Newfoundland by the Americans and men deserted the fishery by the thousands, leaving their gear and equipment to rot on the Labrador coast, in order to take advantage of the high wages being paid in St. John's, Argentia, and Stephenville. The war was followed by confederation with Canada, and the high wages and changing expectations of the 1950s and 60s continued the destruction. Today only the occasional stationer can be found on isolated islands along the Labrador coast using basically the same methods that have been used for the last 150 years.
Recently some efforts have been made by the Canadian Salt Fish Corporation to re-establish the Newfoundland Labrador fishery. During 1975, eighteen medium size fishing boats (35 to 65 feet in length), commonly referred to as Longliners, operated on the north side of Hamilton Inlet where a Corporation barge was stationed for the summer. This barge is a self-contained floating fish plant; the workers live on board and process the catch. The fish is split by an automatic splitter and salted for export undried as salt bulk. It seems that most Iongliners were successful during the 1975 season and this program will probably be continued and possibly extended. The Newfoundland-Labrador fishery may thus survive in a different form.
The Labrador and seal fisheries were two very different operations but they were, at least originally, dependent on each other and they had certain characteristics in common. They were both migratory and they created a certain independence of spirit among those who engaged in them. Although these operations can be compared to some degree with the great Metis and Indian buffalo hunts of the last century, the comparison is only superficial for another element sets them firmly into a different catagory. That element is the sea. Something about the sea affects people spiritually. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville explained:
...Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Therefore if the Labrador and seal fisheries are to be categorized, they must be listed among the epics of the sea - with the New England whaling industry, the Norwegian Finmark fishery, and the Grand Bank fishery. They created, if only by the harsh process of elimination, a physically strong people. In 1852 Arthur Cochrane, Commander of the H.M.S. Sappho wrote of the Labrador fisher folk, "A stronger and more healthy set of men and women, I have rarely seen." In 1924 George Allan England dedicated his book on the Newfoundland seal fishery, which was published under the title Vikings of The Ice, "To the strongest, hardiest and bravest men I have ever known: The Sealers of Newfoundland." Those two activities were fraught with danger and death as has always been the case with great migrations, voyages, and industries dependent on the oceans. Numerous crafts were lost annually in the Labrador fishery and often many lives as well. In an October gale in 1885, eighty schooners and 300 lives were lost and 2,000 people were rendered destitute - and that during a time of year when most fishermen had already returned to the Island. In 1914 there were two major sealing disasters. The S.S. Southern Cross, with 173 men on board, disappeared without a trace one night while returning from the ice and the S.S. Newfoundland lost 77 men in a snow storm. These industries with their hardships and triumphs created a distinctive way of life in Newfoundland and out of this grew a folklore and culture which have always dominated the whole Island. The drama that the seal and Labrador cod fisheries instilled in outport life was at the core of Newfoundland's North Atlantic nationhood.
