Natural History

< White Gold and Train OiY

The Walrus on PEL by Geoff Hogan

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T he year is 1500; the place, some-where along the north shore of

what will later be called Prince Edward Island.

You hear them first, as you walk over the towering sand dunes towards the sea. The sounds from the beach rise and fall, a cacophony of muffled roars and growls interspersed with moments of silence. Then, as you crest the last of the dunes, you see them. Stretching for perhaps a quarter of a mile along the shore, from the water's edge to the base of the dunes, a herd of enormous crea-tures have gathered. Their bulk intim-idates: twice as long as a man, ten times as heavy. They are packed closely together, each using the other's bulk for pillow or back rest. They squabble and jostle, jabbing with glistening tusks to claim a comfortable position on the sand. They are walrus.

Walrus i n t h e Gulf

Today we associate the walrus with Arctic ice-packs, igloos, and the Land of the Midnight Sun. It was not always so, however, and their occurrence— indeed, their abundance—in our own waters is a largely-forgotten aspect of our natural heritage.

As with many other large mammals, the original distribution of the walrus was extensive, and comprised distinct populations. Walrus formerly occurred in large numbers in the waters sur-rounding the British Isles, the Queen Charlotte Islands on the Pacific Coast, as far south as Cape Cod in the West-ern Atlantic. The walrus population in Eastern Canada inhabited suitable shoreline and shallow waters through-

out the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along certain coasts of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.

Based upon early accounts of har-vest figures, writer and biologist Far-ley Mowat estimates the walrus popu-lation south of the Strait of Belle Isles to have been not less than three-quarters of a million at the time of the first European contact. Major concen-trations were found on Sable Island, Cape Breton Island, St. Pierre and Miquelon, the Ramea/Burgeo archipe-lago on the south coast of Newfound-land, Prince Edward Island, and, most important of all, the Magdalen Islands. As many as 250,000 walrus may origi-nally have frequented the Magdalens, and even as late as 1765, there were still upwards of 100,000 on that sandy chain of islands.

It is difficult today to imagine Prince Edward Island beaches thronged with grunting, heaving, lumbering walrus. Four hundred years ago, however, it would have been impossible to ignore them. Walrus are large, gregarious marine mammals that live primarily on molluscs, which they dig from the shallow sea bottom. Adult males may weigh well over a ton and measure up to 12 feet in length. Both sexes grow curved, white, ivory tusks, which are, in fact, enlarged canine teeth composed of pure dentine. Tusks reach an aver-age length of 14 inches in young adults, though as the animals age, the tusks may wear down to stubs. The extremely tough hide covers a thick layer of insu-lating blubber that protects the animal from cold, the body being almost com-pletely hairless.

Prince Edward Island provided an ideal habitat for the walrus. Its shal-

low coastal waters abounded with many species of shellfish that the great beasts fed upon: clams, mussels, limpets, snails. What is more, the gently slop-ing sandspits and beaches were excel-lent hauling out areas for their enor-mous bulks. In winter, the walrus likely moved to the edge of the Gulf ice, returning to the Island in the spring. Although the numbers of walrus crowd-ing Island beaches never approached the Magdalen Islands population, it is not unreasonable, based on early ac-counts, to place their number at many thousands. Writing in 1903, A. B. War-burton noted, "The herds frequenting these coasts must have been large, as I have seen it stated that the number of sea-cows [walrus] caught in the season sometimes ran up into the thousands."

White Gold and Train Oil

Around 1500, or shortly thereafter, the great walrus herds of Atlantic Canada were discovered by Europeans. Until that point, Man had made few inroads on the New World populations. Human contact was restricted to those areas within reach of the native Indians. Moreover, walrus made formidable opponents when provoked. Hence, it is unlikely that the Indians, with their stone weapons and limited needs, made any serious impact on walrus numbers. The Europeans, however, possessed firearms and iron spears, and they had ships to take them to the far-flung rookeries on Sable Island, the Magdal-ens, and, of course, Prince Edward Island. Even more ominously, they were greedy for walrus. By 1500, they had annihilated the walrus herds around

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the British Isles and along most of the Scandinavian coasts. With the hunt-ing grounds of the Old World exhausted, they now turned to the New.

It was not walrus flesh that the hun-ters sought; the meat was apparently of little value, being too tough and fishy for most palates. They prized other parts of the animal. Walrus ivory—called "white gold"—was of the highest quality, rivalling that of ele-phant ivory. It was valued in Europe as a luxury item. Eventually, as elephant

ivory from Africa poured into Europe, walrus ivory became of little value, and was either discarded by hunters or used for ship's ballast.

Of greater significance were the hide and oil. Walrus hide was tough and durable. For the early settlers (who referred to the walrus by a variety of local names, the most common being "sea-cow"), it was an extremely valu-able commodity. As Warburton noted, "At a time when ordinary articles required about the New World settle-

ments were most difficult to procure, when goods could only be obtained with much trouble, and most frequently not at all, the sea-cow's hide afforded an exceedingly strong and excellent material for traces and other parts of harness in the new lands, and to a great extent would take the place of leather for other purposes." A single animal could yield 100 yards of inch-round rope when cut spirally from the hide. Such walrus leather was apparent-ly exported from the Island to Quebec.

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But it was the oil obtained by boiling down the walrus's huge fat reserves that, in the end, was of the greatest value. It was called "train oil" (as was the oil obtained from the blubber or fat of whales). Depending on the size of the animal, the fat from two to four walrus was required to make a barrel of the substance. Walrus oil was among the finest of all known animal oils, being used in the manufacture of soaps, and even eaten by the early Acadian inhab-itants of the Island. Thus, it was of

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immediate use to the early settlers for their own purposes, as well as a valu-able article for barter or trade.

The Killing The first serious threat to the Island walrus population may have come from a Portuguese merchant-adventurer named Joao Alvares Fagundes. Accord-ing to Farley Mowat's Sea of Slaugh-ter, Fagundes was granted a license from the King of Portugal in 1521 to exploit eight island groups in the New World where walrus were found. Prince Edward Island was included among these, and a year-round settlement was supposedly es tab l i shed there by Fagundes. It was destroyed a decade later, either by Indians or by French adventurers anxious to exploit the "white gold mines" themselves. No physical trace of the Portuguese out-post has ever been discovered. What is known for certain is that the killing occurred; and as it continued, the pres-sure on walrus stocks mounted.

The walrus "fishery", as it was often called, was conducted primarily on shore. At sea, the huge mammal was a powerful swimmer; on land, its clumsy bulk made it vulnerable if not helpless. The most effective means of capturing large numbers of the animals was to sneak up upon a group resting on the beach, and drive them inland, using pointed sticks. Once out of sight of water, the walrus became disoriented and were readily slaughtered/Several hundred animals could be killed at a time by this method.

No doubt there was an element of danger involved in shore herding, if the walrus suddenly realized their fatal mistake and turned to charge back to the safety of the sea. They could be very dangerous if injured or if their young were threatened, particularly when in the water, where their great bodies were superbly mobile. In his 1828 account of Prince Edward Island, John MacGregor relates a story (probably apocryphal) about a crew of Island Acadians that had killed a young wal-rus from their schooner offshore:

A little time after, as one of the men was skinning it in the boat alongside the vessel, an old wal-rus rose up, and got hold of the man between the tusks and fore-fins, or flippers, and plunged down under water with him, and after-wards showed itself three or four times with the unfortunate man in the same position, before it disappeared altogether.

While an occasional man may have been killed by walrus, Man's slaughter

of the walrus was unrelenting. One after another, their rookeries were wiped out. So alarming was the mis-management of the harvest that the walrus became the subject of the first legislation enacted on Prince Edward Island.

When St. John 's [that is, Prince Edward] Island passed under British control in 1763, great things were expected of its fisheries, the walrus among them. Six years later, when the Island was made into a separate col-ony, the walrus was fast disappearing, and only weeks after his arrival in Sep-tember, 1770, the first British Gover-nor, Walter Patterson, took legislative action to save the species. "An Act for the better regulating the carrying on the Sea Cow Fishery on the Island of St. John" made a license necessary in order to hunt walrus, established a season beginning October 1 and end-ing November 30 (when oil content was highest), and set fines of £20 for hunt-ing without a license or out of season and £50 for trying to keep walrus from landing. In a covering letter to the Secretary of State, Governor Patter-son, the Bill's architect, explained the latter penalty. According to Patterson, an entrepreneur named Gridley, oper-ating out of the Magdalen Islands, was in the habit of sending employees to St. John's Island to drive the walrus from shore, thereby causing them to seek safety on the Magdalens, where they could be harvested more conveniently.

The fines were huge by the standards of the day, but it was too little, too late. Regulations were difficult to enforce, and following the end of the American Revolution in 1783, Yankee fishermen poured into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in pursuit of cod, mackerel, and, to no small extent, walrus. As the eventual result became more obvious, the walrus hunters increased their efforts in an attempt to get something out of the industry while they still could. Between 1770 and 1775, John Stewart would report in 1806, walrus were being killed in "considerable numbers" near the north point of Prince Edward Island. Thereafter, the harvest appears to have dwindled, but even at the time of his writing, Stewart remained optimistic: "the breed still exists, and they are now known to be increasing fast, and if the killing them was but under proper reg-ulations, they might again become so numerous as to be an object of great consequence...."

Stewart was mistaken. His was the false hope for recovery Man has enter-tained for so many of the species He has driven to extinction. By the end of the 18th century, all of the once-teeming rookeries had been destroyed,

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and the walrus in this region was essentially extinct.

R e m n a n t s

Within a generation, the walrus was largely a memory. In the report of his geological survey of the Island in 1847, Abraham Gesner noted that pieces of walrus skin were still in use among Island settlers. "A deep pond near Tig-nish," he continued somewhat vaguely, "is said to be filled with their bones, and their tusks of ivory are occasion-ally found on the shore, or in the forests." But his contention that wal-rus were still sometimes seen in Island waters was, like the story of the bone-littered pond, only hearsay.

Today, nearly 200 years after the last herds frequented our shores, the wal-rus is virtually forgotten on Prince Edward Island. They are remembered chiefly in a few place names, like Sea Cow Pond (the site of Gesner's walrus graveyard?), near Tignish, and Sea Cow Head in Summerside harbour. There are more vivid reminders. In September, 1985, an Island fisherman came to the University of Prince Ed-ward Island, seeking an explanation for the curious object he had hauled up while dragging his net off Covehead. In the back of his pickup truck was the enormous skull of an adult walrus, complete with two glistening white tusks.

As far as can be determined, first hand accounts of walrus on the Island do not

exist; thus we must rely upon what has been repeated or passed down. The walrus is mentioned in a number of early accounts of the Island. Of these, John Stewart's An Account of Prince Edward Island (1806) is probably the best source of information on the habits of the walrus on Prince Edward Island, and the methods used to kill them. Other valuable sources include John MacGregor's Historical and Des-criptive Sketches of the Maritime Col-onies of British America (1828) and A. B. Warburton's much later account of the walrus, "The Sea-Cow Fishery", in the original Acadiensis, 3 (April, 1903): 116-119. Kennedy Wells places the walrus in the context of the historical development of the Island fishery in his new study, The Fishery of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown: Rag-weed Press, 1986).

The curious may find the report of Abraham Gesner's geological survey of Prince Edward Island in the Jour-nals of the Island House of Assembly for 1847, Appendix D. Governor Pat-terson's historic Act to regulate the sea cow fishery, and the correspondence concerning it, is contained in the Col-onial Office records (CO 226), available on microfilm at the University of Prince Edward Island.

The most thorough account of the walrus and its demise in the western Atlantic is given by Farley Mowat in his 1984 book, Sea of Slaughter. A. W. F. Banfield's National Museum of Canada publication, The Mammals of Canada provides a modern description of walrus distribution and biology.

I wish to thank both Dr. Edward MacDonald and Elinor Vass for helping me to locate many of these sources, i a i

The march to extinction. European seamen harpoon walrus off North Cape in this sketch by A. Maitland from Phyllis Blakeley & Myra C. Vernon, The Story of Prince Edward Island (Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1963).

The upper half of a walrus skull, complete with a magnificent set of tusks, was brought up in a fisherman's net in the waters off Covehead. Courtesy Biology Department, University of PEL

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