THE SEAL AND WHALE FISHERY OF 1886. 183 



boats, and injured the ship so much that she began to leak ; all 

 this time the weather was of great severity, and the snow and 

 mist blinding. Ultimately the ice eased, to the intense relief of 

 her crew, and with the loss of one of her men the 'Aurora' 

 returned to St. John's to refit. On her second trip she secured 

 640 old Seals. 



The total result, so far as the twenty-one British vessels which 

 took part in the Newfoundland fishery were concerned, was one 

 lost, two clean ; and amongst the remaining eighteen vessels a take 

 of 195,396 Seals (against Sll,587 for nineteen British vessels 

 last year) ; of these the ' Ranger ' took 35,894, the ' Falcon ' 

 24,768, the 'Wolf 19,521, the 'Leopard' 15,954, and the 

 ' Greenland ' 15,000. Of the remaining thirteen vessels, the 

 total catch was 84,259, or an average of 6481 ; the average of the 

 whole eighteen being 10,855 Seals, the produce of which was 

 worth about ^18 10s. per ton. 



Taking the Dundee portion of the above fleet alone, which 

 consisted of six vessels, one— the ' Resolute' — as before said, was 

 lost, and the remaining five vessels brought home only 41,606 

 Seals (as against 71,272 the i^revious season), or an average of 

 8321 each. It will thus be seen that for the whole of the Dundee 

 vessels, and ten of the St. John's fleet, the voyage, so far, must 

 have been a most unprofitable one, even if the price of produce 

 had been much higher than it now is ; practically only the five 

 vessels enumerated as having taken 15,000 Seals and upwards 

 made paying voyages. 



The Greenland sealing has this season been an entire failure, 

 not so much, perhaps, from the absence of Seals as from 

 the severity of the weather, and the state of the ice pre- 

 venting an ai^proach to the breeding pack. The passage out was 

 a fair one, and the Seals were found on April 2nd, in lat. 74° 

 N., long. 2° E. ; but the weather proved so tempestuous that it 

 was not until the 7th they could be reached, and the strong gales 

 had then broken up the ice into small patches, and thus dispersed 

 the Seals. Three Scotch vessels only were present, the ' Erik,' 

 ' Hope,' and ' Earl of Mar and Kellie ' (the ' Eclipse ' did not 

 take part in the young sealing), and they captured about 4500 

 'white-coats;' there were also twenty-one Norwegians, who 

 secured some 31,500 others, in addition to which there were also 

 about 4000 old Seals killed, making a total of, say, 40,000 old 



