287 



HISTORY OF THE ISLANDS 



The discovery of the South Orkney Islands was a direct result of the rapid rise and 

 decline of the great southern sealing industry which followed in the wake of Smith's 

 discovery of the South Shetlands in February 1819. The slaughter of the fur seal, having 

 begun quietly in January 1820, had reached such a pitch the following summer, 1820-1, 

 that many sealers had the greatest difficulty in obtaining full cargoes of skins in the 

 season 1821-2. Weddell,^ while deploring the ruthless conduct of the industry at its 

 inception and uttering a tardy exhortation for scientific control, states that by the 

 beginning of 1822 the fur seal had become nearly extinct. The meagre cargoes 

 which, as Bruce records,'^ were brought back to England in 1822 give a further in- 

 dication of the disastrous depletion that had occurred in the fur seal stock during the 

 single summer season 1820-1. The extent of the slaughter that took place during 

 this season is well illustrated by Bruce 's figures. On April 5, 1821, he records, Captain 

 George Powell in the cutter 'Eliza', one of at least forty-seven British and American 

 sealing vessels, brought to London between 16,000 and 18,000 fur sealskins. Of the 

 following season, 1821-2, Powell himself writes : ^ 



. . .we had a very favourable passage down, and arrived on the 30th [of November at Elephant 

 Island] ; but saw no prospect of getting many seals, for the boats that I left here had not obtained more 

 than 150 skins. There was no time now for hesitating about the matter, for all the land that had yet 

 been discovered would not afford skins enough for one vessel, although there were so many taken 

 last season ; the skins are now more scarce, but I believe the ships and vessels that are here for them 

 this season are many more than last. 



Webster,* who visited the South Shetlands in the 'Chanticleer' in 1829, refers to the 

 very swift decline of the industry in the following passage : 



The harvest of these seas has been so effectually reaped, that not a single fur seal was seen by us, 

 during our visit to the South Shetland group ; and, although it is but a few years back since countless 

 multitudes covered the shores, the ruthless spirit of barbarism slaughtered young and old alike, so as 

 to destroy the race. Formerly two thousand skins a week could be procured by a vessel ; now not a 

 seal is to be seen. 



Such, then, was the magnitude of the slaughter, by Americans and British alike, which 

 came very near to exterminating the South Shetland fur seals in the summer months 

 of 1820-1. 



In these circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that even as early as the end of 

 1 82 1 the more enterprising masters of sealing vessels, having gleaned all the beaches then 

 known in the South Shetlands as far east as the Elephant and Clarence group and 



1 Weddell, J., 1827, A Voyage towards the South Pole, 2nd ed., pp. 141-2 (London). 



' Bruce, W. S., 1920, Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Research and Development in the 

 Dependencies of the Falkland Islands, Appendix 11, pp. 38-9 (London). 



^ Powell, G., 1822, Notes on South-Shetland, etc., p. 7 (London). 



* Webster, W. H. B., 1834, Narrative of a Voyage to the Southern Atlantic Ocean in the years 1828, 1829, 

 1830, II, pp. 302-3 (London). 



