Swilin' Time

In the Arctic icefields off Newfoundland's east coast, hardy, wind-bitten swilers (sealers) were out on their annual seal hunt.

With sirens screaming and bunting gay in the rigging, a dozen stout-planked ships had slipped through the Narrows of St. John's Harbor and out of sheltered northern ports. If they came back in four to eight weeks with prime pelts stowed fore & aft, every swiler would get around $200 apiece for his voyage. If they came back clean, both they and the merchants who backed them would get nothing. As always, the hunt was a gamble.

The terms of the gamble had long been set by law and custom: no seals, no pay. The risk is great. The rafting ice might shear off a rudder or propeller, or jam the ship so long it would miss the main patch of seals. But the adventure still thrills the hardy Newfoundland fishermen.

They know that each spring, without fail, the harp seals (so called from their harplike back markings) swim to meet the Arctic ice floes, honeycomb them with blowholes, whelp near the holes in late February. In three weeks, the ravenous young cats weigh about 70 pounds, are prime young "whitecoats."

The Slaughter. Newfoundland swilers are old hands at blasting and nudging their craft clear into the whelping ground. There the barrel man, high in the crow's-nest, spots the whitecoats. The ship runs alongside, the men grab a gaff (a pole with a steel hook on the end) and clamber overside. They race to kill the first whitecoat and bring back its tail to dip it ceremoniously in a glass of rum as a toast to a bumper trip.

Once in the patch, the slaughter begins. A sharp blow on the nose with the gaff kills the seal, a few deft strokes of the knife and the pelt is sculped off. All day long the killing goes on; the ice runs red with blood. At night the crewmen trudge back to cramped quarters aboard ship for a meal of seals' flippers, a mug of black tea. Then a night's sleep, fully clothed, a breakfast of "fish and brewis" (boiled hardtack), and off on the ice again. In a good day a sealer can sculp 120 seals.

In St. John's and the outports, the return of the sealers would be anxiously awaited, for the seal hunt and tragedy have long been synonymous. But when they come back, badly in need of a bath and reeking of blubber, the sealers will be able to make a few more dollars by selling flippers (up since the war from $1 a dozen to $1 apiece) to housewives for flipper pies. The flippers, which taste something like saltwater duck, are one of Newfoundland's national dishes.

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