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Updated: May 12, 2025
Specimen two feet and a half long. Inhabits rocky shores, and is very sluggish; it does not grow to a very large size. Caught by hook, 6th April, 1841. No. 38. UROLOPHUS. Native name, KEGETUCK or BEBIL. "Young sting-ray" of the sealers. Caught by seine, 4th May, 1841. No. 28. Near PLATYRHINA. Native name, PARETT. "Fiddler" of the sealers; Green skate of the settlers.
Conversations in the ordinary tone had been heard by the sealers when the speakers were nearly a mile off; and, on several occasions, attempts had been made to hold communications, by means of the voice, between the wreck and the hut. Certain words had been understood; but it was found impossible to hold anything that could be termed conversation.
In these sealers the discipline is by no means of that distant and military or naval character that is found in even an ordinary merchantman. As every seaman has an interest in the result of the voyage, some excuse was made for this departure from the more general usage; and this familiarity itself never exceeded the bounds that were necessary to the observance of duty.
We had to remain five days, while the skins were drying, and then made sail for the island where we expected to find the sealers. Four days passed before we sighted it. As we drew near, a flag was seen flying from a staff on the highest point.
Not many sea-going people outside of professional whalemen or sealers know much about the "killer" and his habits, and still less of his appearance. In the colder seas of the northern part of the globe it is not uncommon; and only last year one was playing havoc, it was stated, with the fishermen's nets off the northeastern coast of Ireland.
Sometimes the sailors, attracted by the good looks of the Maori girls, took them as wives and lived in New Zealand. These men generally acted as sealers. They caught the seals that abounded on some parts of the coast, and gathered their skins until the ships called back, when the captain would give them tobacco and rum, guns and powder in exchange for their seal-skins.
The vessel carries only about eighteen hundred gallons of water and the men use five hundred in a day. This, however, is of little consequence, for a party each day brings back plenty of ice, which is excellent drinking after being boiled. This ice is of very different qualities. Now it is "slob" mixed with snow born on the Newfoundland coast. This is called "dirty ice" by the sealers.
"So much the worse for us sealers, then, sir. This is my seventeenth v'y'ge into these seas, sir, and I will say that more of them have been made with officers and crews that did not keep the Sabbath, than with officers and crews that did.
Yes, yes; we want a monstrous navy, to convoy sealers, and carry letters about, and keep some folks at home, while it lets other folks go about their lawful business." "Of what islands are you speaking, uncle? Surely the sealing islands, where Roswell has gone, are public and uninhabited, and no one has a better right there than another!"
Mates an' crew down the Barb'ry Coast, I reckon. Sealers have liberties last shore-day. Like whalers. I've buried a few irons myself, matey, but I'll never sight the vapor of a right whale ag'in. Stranded, I am. So you'll do me a favor, matey, an' pilot me down into the cabin, if so be the skipper's there. If he ain't, I'll wait for him. I've got the right an' run o' the Karluk's cabin.
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