IN TRAINING FOR THE SEAL HUNT
  by John Lou Ennis

I remember well my childhood days in Merasheen. The following memories were formed at least seventy-five years ago. When Hickey's Bottom started to freeze over in the fall of the year, for a few days we youngsters had a wonderful time. We'd run across the Bottom on the ice that had formed in a couple of nights: it was saltwater ice which would bend as we ran across it. It was more flexible than freshwater ice, which we wouldn't dare go across for fear of going through into the icy water. That fun only lasted a few days before the novelty wore off then we'd look forward to the spring of the year and the breakup of the ice close to the shoreline.

When the break up came, it left a lot of clampers, floating pans of ice. The fun was in trying to get from pan to pan without getting wet. The clampers wouldn't stay afloat very long with a youngster or two hopping onto it. If it sank before you hopped to the next one, you got wet: at the very least, your rubbers would fill with icy salt water; at most, you would end up in the water, soaking wet from head to toe. I suppose there is no need to state here that we weren't allowed to be “toeying" as we called it.

In those days, we'd hear plenty of stories about sealers and we were pretty proud of them. We'd heard about the sealers easily hopping from pan to pan of ice in the great hunt. Wasn't that what we were doing in Hickey's Bottom? A few of us youngsters, especially Jim Ennis and I, got the idea we'd keep practicing hopping on our clampers until, finally, we'd get a berth to the ice and go after the seals ourselves. When we were about seventeen or eighteen, we did try to get a berth. Sealing was a pretty exciting adventure for young fellows in those days. Sealers were heroes to us and it would be great honor to be picked up by one of those famous skippers.

We figured we'd have no trouble at all being picked, and getting a berth, considering the extensive training we had hopping the sizable ice pans in Hickey's Bottom. We figured we were pretty good at it, after all we had survived this long without getting drowned. We never doubted our skill. We figured we had a very good chance. Since we didn't want our parents to know, we quietly wrote to Captain Abram Kean, one of the most famous sealing skippers, asking him for a berth. We told him we had a lot of basic training hopping the clampers and explained our experience in Hickey’s Bottom. He mustn't have been too impressed because we weren't among the men he picked that year.

I remember when Bill and Jack Pitcher would come in from Pitcher's Point on their way to school in the morning. If there were clampers in Hickey’s Bottom, Bill and Jack would be sure to enjoy them. Sometimes they would get their rubber boots full of water, and be in no shape for going to school. Then they would come up to our house and my mother would take their wet boots and socks and dry them on a junk of wood in the oven before they went to school.

Mothers are funny. Sometimes they have all the sympathy in the world for other people's youngsters, but dare you try it. In the meantime, she always threatened us never to do that, never to go on the ice pans, because we might get drowned. Many times I went to school soaking wet, after hopping the clampers, because I didn't want to go home and tell my mother I was out doing the same thing.

I remember one real frosty winter. Hickey’s Bottom was frozen over with no signs of a breakup. Frank and I were getting anxious to see toey pans to hop on, so we went to work and got an axe each. We went out on the harbor ice, well out of sight of the house, and set about to chop out a clamper for ourselves. We were going to have a great time hopping the clamper we chopped out. The ice was very thick at the time and we had to chop and chop away at it. We couldn't chop it free, so we finally decided to break it loose by jumping on it. We jumped and jumped on the piece we were trying to loosen, and finally it gave way.

When it gave way, Frank and I went down with it, into the icy water below. As the pan of ice popped back to the surface, we got jammed between the edge of the clamper and the solid ice around it. We had an awful time trying to get clear. It was just about dark when we got home and we had to sneak into the house to hide away our wet boots and socks so we wouldn't get caught.