634 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Dec. 30, 1905. 
on the Kormandorski Islands and along Saghalien, 
the Kuriles, Kamchatka and the Japanese coast. In 
one year, I have forgotten the exact date, they took 
142.000 skins while the Alaska Company took less than 
half that number. This led to rapid decrease in the 
herds and a great howl from the company paying for 
the exclusive privilege of seal fishing in the Behring 
Sea. The United States sent revenue cutters up there 
and seized a lot of sealing schooners, among them being 
a number of Canadian vessels. This raised a howl from 
Canada and England and led to the meeting of the 
Paris Tribunal in 1893 to settle the question. In the 
meantime the Alaska Company’s lease had expired, 
in 1890, and we re-leased to the North American Com- 
mercial Company for another twenty years at $60,000 
per year and a royalty of $2.62}/^ for each skin. 
“They did not do a thing to us in that Paris Tribunal 
of 1893. We laid claim to all of Behring Sea as part 
of Russia’s possessions transferred to us by our pur- 
chase of Alaska; that the Czar had claimed the Behring 
as a closed sea; we had bought it from him and were 
entitled to its complete control. Those Britishers 
didn’t do a thing but take down some musty old papers, 
brush off the dust and show us that seventy years be- 
fore that, America had denied Russia’s claim to a closed 
sea; that, on the contrary, we had declared for and 
maintained an open sea and free water, limiting Rus- 
sia’s jurisdiction to a cannon shot from shore. Now, 
what could we do in the face of that? Nothing but 
sit down and be quiet. All we got out of that was a 
closed season from May i to July 31, and a sixty-mile 
zone around the Prybiloffs for five years; later we had 
to pay Canada nearly $500,000 for her vessels seized 
by our cutters. 
“Pelagic sealing, you know, is hunting seals in the ' 
open sea while they arc on their way to and from their 
rookeries. We wanted England to aid us in stopping 
that, but she would not do it; then we wanted the use 
of firearms prohibited; England halfway agreed to that, 
but never enforced it. Now, here is the situation. 
America forbids its citizens to engage in pelagic seal- 
ing. other nations do not. America forbids its citizens 
to use firearms in hunting seals; other nations do not, 
although England partly agreed to the proposition, but 
never seals the arms of an offending .schooner like 
America does. America forbids the killing of female 
seal; other nations do not. America has forbidden the 
importation of seal skins; other nations have not. 
America is the only nation policing the sealing waters; 
England sends a small man-of-war up there once in 
awhile that steams around and then goes into some 
port and lays up. We are driven out of our seas by 
our own revenue cutters, while subjects of other nations 
are permitted to come in' and kill and send away the 
pelts. This is the fifth time now I have been turned 
back by the cutters. We take out sealing papers for 
the north and sail away. Up there we are met and 
turned back by the cutters. For this I now have five 
claims against the Government for the loss of as rnany 
season’s product. America is sitting meekly and quietly 
with folded hands, while other nations are robbing 
her of untold millions. A few of us are striving to 
get our share, sometimes we escape the sea police that 
America keeps up there to protect the seals for other 
nations, and sometimes we do not. 
“Up on the Pribyloffs the seals calve about the first 
of July and it is a month or more before the young are 
able to care for themselves. During that time the 
female seals range far our after fish; that is why the 
sixty-mile zone was established for five years. Along 
in August and the first of September the herd begins 
to take to the water and start south through the passes 
of the Aleutian Islands. No one knows how far they 
go, but I have often picked up some of the herd on the 
way north in the spring as far south as 43°- That will 
be along early in March, and by May they are nearing 
their rookeries again. It is peculiar, but a fact, that 
the Russian seals do not come east of the i8oth merid- 
ian, nor do the seals of the Pribyloffs and Alaska go 
west of it. 
“In going on a sealing cruise we generally start along 
the latter part of January or early in February and ex- 
pect to pick the herd on the way north along the coast 
about 43° or 45°. In the fall coming down they keep to 
the deep water, but returning they circle in to the 
coast. The ordinary schooner of to-day is 90 or 100 
feet long, about 25 feet beam and 8 feet depth of hold. 
Some are, however, much smaller, and I have cruised 
in 20 and 40-ton boats. In otter hunting, we use even 
smaller craft in order to slip into inlets in the coast. 
“The rig of a sealer like I have described will be two 
masts with main and fore courses, gaff topsails, jibs 
and staysails. The time was when we did not have 
to carry so much canvas, but nowadays it takes a big 
spread of cloth to catch enough wind to leave a cutter. 
Generally such a craft would carry a crew of thirty 
men, all told, three men for each of the eight boats, 
the captain, two mates, cook and helper and cabin boy. 
The boats are clinker-built double-enders, 20 feet long 
and about /[V2 feet beam, in which a small mast can 
be stepped and a jib set on the stay. These boats are 
manned by three men each, the hunter, the boat-puller 
and boat steerer; the two latter are allowed fifty cents 
each for every seal killed by their hunter. For the 
past few years I have had the same boat-puller and 
steerer. When I get my lay, I hunt them up and they 
ship with me. They know my ways and I know theirs, 
and I do not even have to speak when caution is neces- 
sary; if we have a successful season. I also pay them 
something from my earnings in addition to that re- 
ceived from the owners. 
“Say the lookout picks up the herd some morning 
along about 45° north, the word is passed and the eight 
boats go over the side. In each boat there are two 
shotguns with cartridges carrying buckshot, 21 pellets 
to the load; a five or ten-gallon keg of water and a box 
of provisions and a compass. The location of the herd 
is given, the captain lays a general course, and the 
boats give way. We often range from 15 to 25 and 30 
miles from the schooner, sometimes a fog comes down 
and then — 
“Seals go in bands of from three or four to thirty or 
forty, but a herd may consist of tens of thousands. In 
the old days I haye seep the sea fairly alive with them 
for miles. They can sleep right on the water, while an 
otter does not. If a seal is asleep a first-class boat- 
steerer can run within six or eight yards without wak- 
ing it. When the old bulls give the alarm the herd 
in hearing goes under water. The double shot is a trick 
and requires quick action on the part of the hunter. 
If two seals are cloTe together the boat-steerer brings 
them in line for the hunter who fires at the one ahead 
or furthest away and instantly depresses the muzzle 
of the gun and plugs the nearest one. At the first 
shot he fires directly over the nearest one which always 
throws up its head at the whistle of the shot, and then 
dives; that is the second which the hunter must utilize. 
When the herd goes down, we go on in the same gen- 
eral direction to pick up others or to meet the first 
when it comes up, if it does. If I see I am going to 
have a busy day I set my two men to skinning when I 
have six seals in the boat; an ordinary fur seal will 
weigh about 125 pounds. A good skinner will strip the 
pelt from one and have the carcass overboard in five 
minutes. He runs the knife around the tail flipper, then 
rips the pelt up the belly to the jaw, passes the knife 
around each of the forward flippers and then begins 
skinning much as one does the carcass of a steer. The 
pelt comes away easily, and after reaching the flippers, 
they are poked through the holes and the skin is taken 
from the head. When we return at night the skins are 
counted and the captain and mates salt and put them 
away. 
“Of course, I am speaking of pelagic sealing, hunting 
in the open sea, and it is against the law for Americans 
to do that, but not for other nations. We follow the 
herd up the coast until we sight a cutter and then— 
Killing seals at the rookeries is easier than knocking a 
pig in the head at the slaughter houses and is sheer 
butchery. You can read all about it in books, what I 
am telling now is known only to the men engaged in it. 
“Sea otter hunting is more dangerous than seal 
hunting, and of late has become a losing proposition. 
Sea otter are almost extinct along the Pacific Coast 
from Mexico to Alaska. I saw an otter skin once that 
sold for $1,000 in London, the raw pelt, too; it was a 
beauty though, fur unusually thick and the color lighter 
than the blue of a maltese kitten. The best skin I ever 
killed sold for $500. I remember the time when sea otter 
were plenty. Off’ the Cherikoffs in ’87 we run on to 
a herd of about 400. It was late in the afternoon, and 
the captain, who happened to be with one of the boats, 
signalled to return quietly to the schooner. He said 
we would not scatter the herd that night, it was so 
late that we could hope to get only a few, but we would 
be out bright and early in the morning. Well, sir, do 
i^ou know that the blasted Indians from Cherikoff got 
on to the herd some way and went into it with their 
lances. The next morning we could not find a single 
otter. 
“Otter range differently on different coasts. Off 
Japan and Kamchatka we find them well off shore in 
deep water, but on the American coast they are found 
close in shore in and on the kelp. Some carry six to 
eight boats on an otter bunting cruise, but in my ex- 
perience four boats are enough. In hunting otter we use 
the ordinary, high-power repeating rifles, one never 
gets near enough to use a shotgun. The four boats 
leave the schooner abreast and about 400 yards apart, 
which formation they keep for miles. If an outside 
boat sights an otter it pulls or sails within shooting 
distance and the hunter fires; if he misses and the otter 
dives, the boat is driven rapidly ahead 200 yards or 
more beyond where the otter went down. The next 
boat pulls to where the otter was last seen; the third 
boat pulls straight ahead even with the first boat and 
tbe fourth pulls even with the one behind, thus forming 
a square in which the otter is sure to come up, as they 
never stay down over five minutes. The signal, when 
an otter is sighted, is the raising , of on oar perpen- 
dicularly. 
“I have been lost on the^ sea nine times. Were you 
ever adrift in an open boat in a fog on the Arctic? 
Well — -all right, say when — here's hoping you may never 
be. The wife out there always expects me to come 
home, and, knowing that she has that confidence, it 
has strengthened me when other men stronger than I 
have dropped off. It is lonely, that North Pacific and 
the Behring; you are away out of the trade routes and 
know that if you are picked up it will be an accident or 
a direct act of Providence. 
“I was one of the crew of the C. G. White that sailed 
from San Francisco in ’90 for the Kormandorski group, 
the Behring and Copper islands, probably the first 
schooner to fit out here for sealing on the Siberian 
coast. We reached the vicinity of the islands all right, 
twenty men, all told. As I said the seals of the Siberian 
coast seldom if ever cross the i8cth meridian, but range 
south from their rookeries and return in the .spring. 
The herd was pretty well north when we picked it up 
one fine morning. "We were then about forty-five miles 
off Copper Island. Six boats put out, three men to 
the boat, leaving Captain Hagman and tbe cabin boy 
in charge of the schooner. We caught up with the herd 
all right, but about 10 o’clock in the morning a strong 
southeast wind came up, kicking up a nasty sea. We 
saw we could not return to the schooner and thought 
to ride out the blow until she could come along and 
pick us up. A little after noon a thick fog settled 
down, and we could see scarcely a boat length ahead. 
A few minutes before it shut down, I had signalled the 
others to turn and run for the lee of the islands, then 
about twenty-five miles away. My boat made the lee 
all right, and we laid there in tbe dense fog all that 
night, all the next day and the greater part of the next 
night. We had become separated from the other boats 
and I had heard nothing of them. Late the second 
night the fog lifted and away off to south’ard I saw 
a riding light. Our provisions were all gone, and we 
were down to our last pint of water. We pulled for the 
light and found it to be on tbe schooner J. Hamilton 
Lewis, Captain Alexander McLean- — yes, this same cap- 
tain of the Carmencita who has been causing all the 
row lately. I told him there were five other boats 
with three men each lost somewhere in the vicinity, 
and we cruised about for three days before we picked 
them up, four of them. Poor fellows, they were about 
fill in. Their water was gone and they hacl had nothing 
to eat but raw seal meat for three days. One was 
dead and two wounded, shot by Russians. They told 
us that the five boats had approached the islands, seek- 
ing shelter, but the Russian guards, thinking it an- 
other raid, opened fire without warning. One man 
dropped in a boat shot through the head, another was 
shot in the breast and another through the leg. Four 
boats immediately put about for sea, they contained 
the dead and wounded; the fifth boat signalled its dis- 
tress and was permitted to land. I heard afterward that 
they wep fairly well-treated until they could be sent to 
the mainland. We kept a sharp lookout for our 
schooner, but failed to raise her and Capt. McLean 
abandoned his summer’s cruise and stood away for San 
Francisco. He said the men he had picked up were in 
sore straits and there would be mourning in eighteen 
families if he did not make port before the C. G. White. 
You see, we had cruised about and, failing to see any 
sign of wreckage., concluded that the captain and cabin 
boy had abandoned the search. McLean is a driver 
and. Lord, how he did send the Lewis down from 55° 
north. The little White beat us in three days. Captain 
Hagman and the boy bringing her all the way alone, 
watch and watch. There was weeping and wailing 
among the families supposed to be lost, but when I 
walked into my house the wife looked up, gave a little 
sob, and said: ‘Oh, Danny, I knew you would come, 
and told others so.’ Hagman had poked about in the 
fog for the two days and when it lifted and he failed 
to see us he thought we had gone down. He never 
had any idea that we would make the lee of the islands 
-in that strong southeaster. 
“Some owners would send the sealers out in any kind 
of an old tub. Nowadays I take a look over the vessel 
before I ship, but in 1889 I was not so cautious. That 
was the season I sailed in the Mary Deleo. The first 
little blow started her seams. We had patent pumps 
that were geared to from 1,400 to 1,600 strokes every 
four hours; we kept that up for the seven months we 
were out in that old hulk. When we came back and she 
went on the ways, I heard that it was found her seams 
had been caulked with half-inch rope and pitched over. 
I never investigated the truth of the report; I feared it 
might be true, and I did not want to meet the 
owners. 
“In the nineties I was in a schooner that was driven 
head on by a gale into the rocks south of Drake’s Bay. 
Some of the crew launched a boat. It was swamped 
before it got a length from the vessel, and a few of 
those aboard reached the rocks. I with others went 
to the rigging, for the sea was breaking over the deck. 
She began breaking up and heeled over until the high 
seas reached us. Now and then a man would go. 
You could see his white face and clenched jaws through 
the black of the night, a sea would strike us and when it 
pas.‘-'ed he v/ould be gone. Do you want to know what 
held me to that rigging all that night? It was the 
thought of my wife knowing I would come home. 
When morning dawned I was alone in the rigging. 
“Two years later I was lost in the fog in my otter 
boat south of the same spot. I was picked up by a 
schooner bound north, and the next day, opposite 
Drake’s Bay, I had the captain put me off in my boat, 
as I was confident that I could make the bay. The 
bar was breaking, my boat was capsized, and I was 
dashed up on the rocks, I stretched and climbed, 
slipped back info the water, climbed again and was 
drawn back by the waves and climbed again, until I 
reached the highest, part of the rocks, and even there 
the waves would sometimes break over me. I held 
on, and in the morning was taken off. Not many yards 
below I could see the rotting hulk of the schooner in 
which I was wrecked two years before. 
“Another season I was hunting otter off Gray’s Har- 
bor. I was in one boat alone, and we had two other 
boats out with two men each. There was a gale come 
on, and our little schooner was driven into the breakers 
on the bar before the two men on board knew what 
was coming. They managed to drive her through, 
however, and made the harbor. I was driven inside 
the breakers and into the surf, but could not make the. 
entrance to the harbor. The shore, a few yards away, 
was a precipitous rock, and to be dashed against that 
meant death, so I had to hold my boat between the 
breakers and the surf, for to have been hit by a breaker 
would have been as equally fathl. By yells and signs 
I directed tbe other men where to c6me and how to 
hold their boats. On the approach of a breaker, they 
were to do as I did; pull away toward shore as far as 
they dared and when the wave broke, row toward it with 
all their might to keep from being carried ashore. They 
did it as long as their strength held, but after four 
hours they, one by one, failed to get far enough away 
from the breakers and were swamped within plain view. 
For five hours I held my boat there. All ihe time I 
kept saying over and over to myself, ‘The wife will be 
waiting for me to come,’ and bj^ God I held. 
‘‘During the sealing season we figure that a hundred 
men are lost from all the boats. That is what My- 
ladies’ sealskins cost — the lives of 100 men each year. 
Things happen in the north and along the Japanese 
and Siberian coasts that never get into the papers. 
“Were you ever caught in the Black Current off the 
Japanese coast, a high see running from the north- 
west, typhoon coming from the southeast and black 
night coming down? No; then may God keep you out 
of it. I was once, in the taut little schooner Kate and 
Ann. That was April 24, 1894; the glass dropped to 
28.20, and if you don’t know what that means, ask 
any old sea captain. A terrible northwest gale raged 
until 10 in the morning, then shifted and a typhoon 
came up from the southeast right against a sea that a 
landsman would say was mountain high. The typhoon 
broke at 6 P. M., and all that time we were riding with 
only a goose-wing mainsail and everything lashed down, 
preventer sheets on the boom and the wheel lashed and 
the men slipping about the wallowing deck with bights 
of rope around their waists. Time and again we were 
buried under tbe smother, but we always qome up; but 
once we caught and hung and thought we were gone. 
We would have been if it had not been for the cap- 
tain. We had two boats on the poop, and a heavy sea 
breaking over the stern filled the boats as the schooner 
jieeled; the weight of the water in the boats held thq 
