A TASTE OF THE OLD NEWFOUNDLAND SEAL HUNT
The Greatest Hunt in the World Captain Abram Kean was the most successful seal hunter in Newfoundland history. In 1922, American writer and explorer George Allan England traveled with Kean aboard his sealing ship, the Terra Nova , publishing a book of his account two years later. Vikings of the Ice (the title was later changed to The Greatest Hunt in the World) is the only eye-witness account ever written of the daily life aboard a wooden-wall, or sealing vessel. On signing on “The hardships some of these men suffer even before they reach St. John’s and ‘sign on’ would kill the average American. For days before the sailing of the fleet, hundreds of them pile into St. John’s. Some walk all the way from home and some travel on the partly snowed-in, irregular streak of rust that Newfoundland calls a railroad. Many of them walk forty or fifty miles to reach even this rust, braving blizzards that scourge and flay. They carry their pitiably meager equipment in ditty b