The Bering Sea's Brazen Seal Poachers, as Told by a Port Townsend Captain
A sealing schooner back from five months in the Bering Sea describes a coordinated scheme of lookouts, false alibis and cached skins used to outwit the revenue cutters.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
PORT TOWNSEND, Sept. 3.—[Special.]—The schooner Kuranus arrived from Bering Sea last night with 50,000 codfish, after a five months' voyage. The vessel reports experiencing an unusual amount of fog and rainy weather this season. The captain says that he is of the opinion that many sealing schooners were unlawfully engaged in killing seals with firearms.
Near where he lay were three or four schooners who kept a cordon of picked boats out at a sufficient distance to give timely warning of the approach of a revenue cutter. Inside of the circle would be several boats' crews slaughtering seals without interference. If a cutter was sighted, firing would cease, and one of the boats would take the firearms and freshly slain seals on board and pull off into the fog and wait until the examination was concluded and the cutter departed. If inquiry was made as to what had become of the men and boat, answer would be made that they were lost from the vessel some time previous. As soon as a few dozen seals were killed the skins would be cached on an unfrequented island and the schooner would return to the sealing ground. The Kuranus's crew report that this was constantly practiced in the sea, and that it was no secret among the sealing craft.
“If a cutter was sighted, firing would cease, and one of the boats would take the firearms and freshly slain seals on board and pull off into the fog and wait until the examination was concluded.”
The Bering Sea fur-seal grounds were the era's great contested resource — an international fight over who could harvest a wild commons and who would police it. This Port Townsend captain's account of lookouts and cached skins is a reminder that evasion of conservation law at sea is nothing new, from 1890s sealing to today's illegal, unreported fishing.
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