Floating Households

Sealing schooners

Sealing fleet moored in Victoria's Upper Harbour.
Image courtesy of City of Victoria Archives, M07826.

By the time Victoria’s sealing fleet was enumerated in June 1911, the industry was in steep decline. Decades of intensive hunting by commercial schooners had severely reduced fur seal populations, and within weeks of the census, the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention would prohibit pelagic sealing in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, effectively ending the trade.

This contraction marked a sharp reversal from earlier decades. In the early 1890s, Victoria’s sealing fleet comprised approximately forty schooners with a combined value of nearly $450,000. A contemporary promotional book, Victoria Illustrated: A Review of the Resources, Terminal Advantages, General Industries and Climate of Victoria (1891), described the industry as so central to the city’s economy that “it required little elaboration,” generating an estimated $1.5 million annually.

The sealing industry relied on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous labour. Schooners were typically owned by Victoria merchants and crewed by sailors from eastern Canada and Europe, while harvesting itself was carried out by Indigenous hunters. The hunters supplied their dugout canoes and harpoons, which were transported aboard the schooners to distant hunting grounds.

Sealing schooners beside the Point Ellice Bridge in Victoria's Upper Harbour, c.1910.
Image courtesy of the City of Victoria Archives, M05841.

By 1911, only four sealing schooners remained in operation. Along with several idle vessels, they were moored in the Upper Harbour near Point Ellice Bridge:

Jessie (1890) - Capt. George Heater + 8 crew
Lady Mine (1880) - Capt. William DeLouchrey + 8 crew
Thomas F. Bayard (1899) - Capt. Hans Blakstad + 6 crew
Pescawha (1906) - Capt. Bertram M. Balcom + 26 crew

The census records of these vessels capture a transitional workforce. Many schooners in the Victoria fleet had been built in Nova Scotia, and three of the four captains were Maritimers, reflecting the industry’s Atlantic Canadian origins. The fourth, Capt. Blakstad, was Norwegian, and sailors from Norway and the Atlantic provinces were prominent among the crews.

Indigenous sealers remained central to the operation of these vessels. Among them was a 30-year-old hunter named Atleo, enumerated aboard the Lady Mine, who came from a prominent sealing family in the Ahousaht community. His presence illustrates the continued importance of Indigenous expertise within an industry that was otherwise nearing its end.

These schooners represent the final phase of a once-vital maritime industry. In 1911, the schooner owners were reluctant to accept the demise of the trade and the years following were marked by a campaign for financial compensation from the Dominion governemt.