246 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Numbers at South Georgia. As to the number of seal which annually haul out 

 at South Georgia, it is impossible to make any definite statement. In the writer's 

 opinion there are at least one hundred thousand, at a very moderate estimate. In all 

 the large bays there are extensive rookeries totalling several thousand for each one: 

 Cumberland, St Andrews, Royal and Sandwich Bays; Gold Harbour and Cooper Bay; 

 Drygalski Fjord and Annenkov Island; King Haakon and Queen Maud Bays; Wilson 

 Harbour and Ice Fjord; Right Whale Bay; Possession, Fortuna and Antarctic Bays 

 all have many large rookeries, and the smaller bays all round the coasts are each plenti- 

 fully supplied, probably exceeding in numbers those of the larger bays. In addition, 

 there are hundreds of small inaccessible coves and beaches between the bays and 

 harbours, which all give shelter to their complement of seal, altogether certainly 

 equalling the numbers of those in the accessible parts. Sealers and whalers with whom 

 the writer has discussed the probable numbers of seal on the island think that the 

 estimate given above is exceedingly cautious, and that a quarter of a million would be 

 short of the true number. 



Elephant Seal Oil Industry. Elephant seal hunting is now carried on in a style 

 different from that of the sailing-ship days. In the old style elephant hunting was 

 combined with fur sealing, until the extinction of the fur seal confined the business 

 to oil hunting alone. The trade was in full swing by 1800, in which year the seventeen 

 vessels at work in the island took 112,000 fur seal skins between them. Weddell 

 stated that in 1823 the fur seal and elephant seal were nearly extinct, "not less than 

 20,000 tons of elephant oil having been shipped to the London market alone, and not 

 less than 1,200,000 fur seal killed since the reports by Captain Cook in 1775 which 

 led sealers to this island". Since then the island has been worked at various times by 

 a few vessels, mostly American, right down to the present century, the last "old-timer" 

 working in the season 1912-13. In the palmy days of the hunting the vessels would 

 anchor in some safe harbour and build on shore, from materials they brought with 

 them, one or more " shallops " to collect the skins and blubber from the various rookeries. 

 Some of these tenders, built in South Georgia more than a century ago, were decked, 

 cutter-rigged vessels, as big as thirty tons. Gangs of men were also put ashore with 

 tr}'-pots and casks at good beaches, where they built huts, sometimes even wintering, 

 and carried on their occupation of killing the elephant seal and boiling out the oil and 

 collecting fur seal skins. When sufficient oil and skins had been accumulated they were 

 rafted off to the ships. In many bays of the island the try-work bricks and cast-iron 

 try-pots of the old sealers are to be seen on the beaches, and at Wilson Harbour the 

 remains of the walls of one of their huts can still be traced. When they had killed 

 the seal with lance, club, or musket, the skin was removed and the blubber flensed 

 off and soaked in sea-water for twenty-four hours to cleanse it. It was then minced 

 and boiled out in large iron pots, the try-works being so arranged that after the first 

 boiling the oil flowed over into another pot in which it was boiled a second time before 

 running off into the casks. The scraps of blubber after they had been boiled were used 

 for fuel. In later days the building of "shallops" was given up and the sealers sent 



