Sea of Slaughter

by Farley Mowat

  To which that indefatigable chronicler of English voyaging, Richard Hakluyt, added: “These beasts are as big as Oxen... the hides big as any Oxe hide... the leather dressers take them to be excellent good to make light targets [shields]... the teeth have been solde in England to the comb and knife makers at 8 groats and 3 shillings the pound, whereas the best [elephant] Ivory is sold for halfe of that... One M. Alexander Woodson of Bristol... a skilful Phisition, showed me one of these beasts’ teeth [from Bonaventure] and assured me that he had made a tryall of it in ministering medicine to his patients and found it as sovereigne [a remedy] against poyson as any Unicornes horne.”

  Having caught the scent, the English were in a fever to seize a share of sea cow wealth; but none knew the whereabouts of the treasure isle. This difficulty was resolved by hiring a French Basque pilot, Stevan de Bocall, to guide two ships to the islands in the spring of 1592. One reached its destination only to find “all the fit places and harbours... to be forestalled and taken up by the Bretons of St. Malo and the [French] Basks of Saint John de Luz.” The vessel’s Master did not dare try to force an entry and so returned home empty-handed. Bocall piloted another voyage in the following year, but again was shut out. Finally, in 1597, a consortium of London merchants fitted out two heavily armed ships, Chancewell and Hopewell, and sent them to seize the Rames, drive out the French, and plant a permanent settlement there. What follows is a shortened version of the account written by Hopewell’s Master, Captain Leigh.

  “The 14th [of June] we came to the Island of Birds [part of the Magdalen group] and saw great store of Morsses or Sea Oxen which were asleep upon the rocks; but when we approached neare unto them with our boats they cast themselves into the sea and pursued us with such furie that we were glad to flee from them. The 18th we came to the Isle of Rames and approaching neare unto the harbour of Halobalino sent our great boats in, which found 4 ships. Namely two of Saint Malo and two Basques of Sibiburo. Whereupon we presently [sailed Hopewell] into harborough and requested them, for our better security, peaceably to deliver up their powder and munitions.

  “They would not consent thereunto: whereupon we sent the boat, well-manned, to fetch their powder and munitions. When [our men] came aboard the saide ships, which were moored together, they were resisted by force of arms, but quickly they got the victorie; which done they fell presently to pillaging the Baskes.

  “Afterwards our ship’s company fell into a mutiny and more than half of them resolved to carry one of those ships away. But they were prevented by the aid which the saide ships received from their countrymen in the other harboroughs. For the next morning very earley they gathered together at least 200 Frenchmen and Bretons who had planted upon the shore 3 pieces of Ordinance and had prepared themselves to fight with us, [and] so soone as we had discerned them, gave the onset upon us with at least an hundred small shot. There were also in readiness to assault us, about three hundred Savages.” Indians had been brought by the French from the mainland to do the dirty work of the walrus slaughter.

  For Captain Leigh it was now a case of turnabout having become fair play. When the French seized two men he sent ashore to parley, he was forced to ransom them with the powder and shot he had stolen. He did so with great protestations that his intentions had been strictly honourable. Nobody believed him. When he tried to leave the harbour, the French refused to release the anchor he had placed on the beach for his shore line, and he was forced to cut the cable. He then tried to fumble his way over the bar but went aground and had to stay on the shoal until dawn awaiting a high tide, terrified that the “Savages” would attack in darkness. When he finally got clear, the French on the beach ironically cheered him off.

  Leigh’s voyage marked the end, for nearly two centuries, of English attempts to enter the Gulf walrus fishery, not so much because of French resistance as because, as we have seen, in the first decade of the seventeenth century they found walrus of their own at Bear Island, and later at Spitzbergen.

  Throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth, the Gulf remained essentially a French lake, with the walrus fishery as one of the most lucrative enterprises there. Permanent factories with overwintering crews were established on the Magdalens and on Miscou Island. Summer walrus stations kept the trypots bubbling along Northumberland Strait; on the coasts of Prince Edward Island; on Anticosti Island; at Cow Head (originally Sea Cow Head), Port au Choix, and St. George’s Bay on the west coast of Newfoundland; at the Mingan Islands and in Seven Islands Bay on the north shore of the Gulf; and even as far up the St. Lawrence River as Île aux Coudres, within sixty miles of the present city of Quebec. In addition, rookeries on the Atlantic coast and islands of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were regularly ravaged. So profitable was this bloody business that Samuel de Champlain valued the sea cow and associated seal fisheries of New France at half a million livres a year—a livre being roughly equivalent to an English pound, or a month’s pay for a working man.

  Year by year the slaughter mounted in intensity... toward the inevitable conclusion. The course of the sea cow’s destruction can be charted by the progressive elimination of the rookeries. All those along the St. Lawrence River had disappeared by 1680. Those on the north shore of the Gulf saw no more walrus after 1704. By 1710, Sable Island had only the bones of sea cows still to show, and the same was evidently true of all the Atlantic coastal rookeries from the Strait of Belle Isle south to the limits of the walrus’s breeding range.

  The ravaged tribes of the heartland alone survived into the first half of the 1700s. But at midpoint in that century, a visitor to Miscou Island found only bones remaining “in such numbers as to form artificial sea beaches... the murdered sea horses having left a more enduring monument than their murderers.”

  When the first English governor of Prince Edward Island took up his duties after the conquest of Canada in 1763, one of his prime concerns was the preservation of the sea cow fishery. He was too late. The tide had already run out for the vast colonies that had once populated the north shore beaches, and no mere governor could reverse it.

  The one remaining foothold of the western Atlantic walrus nation was now the Magdalen Islands. In 1765, Lieutenant Haldiman, a young Royal Navy officer, was sent to the archipelago to investigate the sea cow fishery. His report is the only extant account of how the slaughter was and had been conducted in the Gulf. I have condensed and edited it somewhat.

  “The places where the Sea Cows are killed are called Echouries [and consist of] a space of from one to six hundred feet frontage on the water, running back to the top of a sandbank which is a natural slope, sometimes so steep it is astonishing how so unwieldy an animal could ever get to the top.

  “The method of taking the Sea Cows is as follows. When a great number are assembled below the bank they are followed by others coming out of the sea who, in order to get room, give those in front of them a small push with their tusks. These last are pushed on by more following them until the sea cows farthest from the water are driven over the bank, and so far inland that even the latest arrivals have room to rest; and they usually sleep if not disturbed.

  “The Echouries being full, or containing so many that the hunters can cut off the retreat of three or four hundred; ten or twelve men prepare themselves at dusk with poles about twelve feet long. The attack is made during the night, and the principal thing to be observed is the wind which must always blow from the animals, to prevent the hunters being discovered.

  “When they have approached along the beach to within three or four hundred yards of the Echourie, five men are detached with poles. These creep on hands and knees until they are close to the flank of the herd and to seaward of the high sandbank on top of which most of the sea cows lie. The reason for this is that if those cows farthest inland had the least apprehension they would all turn and retire toward the water. In which case, so far from being able to stop them, it would be great good fortune if
the men saved themselves from being pressed to death or being drowned.

  “Being now ready to begin the attack, the first man gives the Cow in front of him a gentle strike with the end of his pole upon the buttocks, imitating as much as possible the push they give each other. So he proceeds in the same manner with the next Cow counterfeiting the stroke of the tusks and making it advance up the beach while another of his comrades secures him from harm from the Cows to seaward of him.

  “So they continue to the other side of the Echourie, having by this means made a passage which they call the cut. All this time they have observed the utmost silence, but now they begin to halloo and make the greatest noise possible to frighten and alarm the Sea Cows, and as a signal to their comrades to come and assist them. All the men now range themselves along the Cut, driving and beating the Cows to prevent them from falling back toward the sea. Those Cows which turn back from the top of the bank are prevented from escaping by those the men are belabouring toward them, and the collision of the two groups forms a bank of bodies twenty feet high and upwards.

  “The men keep exercising their poles until the beasts are quite fatigued and give up the attempt to escape, after which they are divided into parties of thirty or forty Cows which are driven to a place, generally a mile inland from the Echouries, where they are killed and the fat taken off.”

  Haldiman’s description of a cut is technically adequate, but lacks atmosphere. We must add the thunder of the surf foamed by escaping walrus and the roaring of hundreds of panic-stricken behemoths trapped on the beach. We must visualize the scene in an obscure and windy darkness lighted only toward the end by the red flare of torches. We must imagine the sensations of the men making the cut, crawling on hands and knees and all too well aware that at any instant they may be crushed beneath a black avalanche of flesh and bone. We must see them slipping and cursing in the manure-soaked sand, frantically pounding the heads and bodies of the sea cows, leaping out of the way of one and thrusting with puny human strength at yet another.

  Human casualties did occur, although few records were kept of the unfortunates who died in distant places so that the oil vats and the money bags of Europe would be filled. One old Madelinot remembers hearing his grandfather tell of an occasion when the wind changed just as the hunters were crawling through the herd. Seven men were crushed, gored, or swept into the sea with broken legs and arms to drown.

  Because it was possible to make as many as four cuts at a given echourie in a single season, and because of the sea cow’s excellent sense of smell, it was essential that the actual slaughter take place at least a mile from the echourie itself so that the stench of rotting flesh would not keep the surviving walrus off the beaches. As Haldiman tells us, this was achieved by driving the animals to a sufficiently distant killing ground. Despite their immense strength, the walrus quickly became exhausted as they were forced to hump laboriously over dry land and soft sand. Though clubbed and goaded by human beings, and savaged by dogs, four or five hours could be required for them to drag themselves that long death mile. Calves that had survived the mêlée on the echourie usually died en route. It did not matter. They were too poor in oil to be of value, although an occasional one might provide the killers with fresh meat. By the time the driven beasts reached the abattoir they were incapable of resistance. They dropped their heads and lay quiescent, their only sound the stentorious breathing of exhaustion.

  Once removed from the carcass, the blubber tended to “waste” or liquefy, allowing the precious oil to sink into the ground, so individual walrus were killed only as there was room for their fat in the trypots. But even with two pots boiling twenty-four hours a day, it took many days to render all the blubber from a single cut. During this time, the sun that had tempted the sea cows onto the beaches in the first place became their implacable tormentor. It burned down relentlessly until even their thick hides cooked and split, letting rivulets of blood and oil run down their heaving flanks. No drink was available and so, as their life fluids trickled away, thirst became an ultimate agony.

  Eventually someone would give them their quietus. In Haldiman’s time, this was done by firing a one-inch diameter iron ball from a muzzleloader into the cow’s head. Frequently this only stunned the animal. No matter. The hide was stripped off even if the beast still lived. Then the blubber layer, which in autumn would be at least six inches thick, was sliced clear and forked into the bubbling vats. The naked carcass was left to lie where it was until eventually it, together with hundreds of attendant corpses, rotted down into the fouled and greasy sand, leaving behind only a colossal stench and acres of stained bones.

  In earlier times the tusks had been carefully hacked out of the skulls, but by 1760 they were being largely ignored. A massive influx of elephant ivory into Europe from Africa and India had finally rendered walrus ivory relatively valueless. In the 1800s, a Magdalen Island merchant offered one cent apiece for every sizable walrus tusk that could still be found on the islands. Before that summer ended, the Madelinots had collected more than two tons of ivory from the old killing grounds. However, the merchant was then unable to find a market for this one-time treasure and was reduced to shipping it out as ballast in one of his schooners.

  By 1760, changing European markets had also made walrus hides hardly worth the trouble of preparing them. Oil was now entirely the thing. In 1767, the oil derived from an average spring walrus fetched the equivalent of $20 (1984 value) while that from a fat, fall bull could go as high as $60. But before the next decade ended, the price had doubled! The noose imposed by human avarice was tightening in time-honoured style.

  As the value of their oil rose, so were the walrus even more pitilessly butchered; and as the slaughter burgeoned, so did their numbers fall. But the value of their oil increased with their increasing rarity. The spiral tightened with every turn; and extinction lay at its centre.

  The coup de grâce was delivered in 1762 when the British government gave two Bostonians, a Mr. Thompson and a Colonel Gridley, the monopoly of the walrus fishery at the Magdalens and in neighbouring waters. Gridley first visited the islands during the final years of the war with France, possibly accompanying Vice Admiral Molineux Shuldan, who took a British squadron there and was astounded to behold “seven or eight thousand walrus on each of the Island’s echouries.” What the astute Gridley saw was thousands of pounds sterling to fill the pockets of himself and his friends; and by 1765 he had every reason to know for a fact that what Lieutenant Haldiman had written in his report of that year was marvellously true: “The Magdalens seem to be superior to any place in North America for the taking of the Sea Cow. Their numbers are incredible, amounting, upon as true a computation as can be made, to 100,000 or upwards.”

  During its first year on the islands, Gridley’s crew was only large enough to work three of the eleven traditional Magdalen echouries; nevertheless they killed some 25,000 walrus and made over 1,000 barrels of oil. The following year he imported twenty Acadian French families who had formerly been walrus hunters on Prince Edward Island and in Northumberland Strait.

  Between 1767 and 1774 his firm exported walrus oil to Europe through St. John’s, Newfoundland, to a declared value of nearly £11,000, or about a quarter of a million 1984 dollars. No records exist of how much was shipped via New England ports.

  Gridley and Thompson had their Eldorado, but they were not left in sole possession of it. Following on the conquest of New France, predatory fleets of New England schooners had begun swarming into the Gulf to see what they could find. And they soon found the sea cows. Being rugged upholders of the principles of free enterprise, they were not intimidated by Gridley’s monopoly, and so they not only harried the walrus in the waters around the Magdalens but raided the echouries, too.

  “New England vessels approach close to shore and frequently shoot at the walrus near the Echouries, sometimes through ignorance and sometimes through mischievous design,” wrote
Haldiman. “The Master of one sloop, observing the coast of Brion Island to be well stocked with Sea Cows, made use of every method he could think of to capture them, but without success, till at length he hit on the unfortunate resolution of shooting at them from the banks behind the Echouries. In consequence, he made 18–20 barrels of oil to share among as many men, and the Cows abandoned that Echourie and have never resorted there since.”

  By 1774, as many as 100 New England vessels were fishing the Magdalen waters, mainly for herring and cod but taking walrus whenever they got the chance; and doing so, as the aggrieved owners of the island reported, “in a reckless and barbarous way... driving them away and preventing them from breeding.” The schooner hunt was singularly wasteful. Of every dozen animals shot while in the water, only one or two would be recovered, most of the rest surviving as cripples if they were lucky, or dying later, according to the severity of their wounds.

  Faced with the competition of the schooner men, Gridley redoubled his own efforts to get what remained to be got, hiring or dragooning more labour until he had fifty Acadian families as well as a lawless crew of New England “wharf rats” working for him. What followed was bloody massacre. In 1780 four cuts on one beach alone yielded 2,400 walrus.

  In 1798, Captain Crofton of the Royal Navy was sent to the Magdalens by the governor of Newfoundland to investigate rumours that the sea cows were being perilously depleted. Crofton’s report was brief, and final: “I am extremely sorry to acquaint you that the Sea Cow fishery on these islands is totally annihilated.”