The Captain Who Chose Seals Over His Men

DESCRIPTION In March 1914, Captain Abram Kean gave a hundred and thirty-two Newfoundland sealers twenty minutes of tea and hard bread aboard his ship, then sent them back onto the pack ice in a building blizzard. Fifty-three hours later, seventy-eight of them were dead. The ship they came from had no wireless radio because the owners removed it to save money. This documentary covers the 1914 SS Newfoundland sealing disaster, the disappearance of the SS Southern Cross with all one hundred and seventy-three hands, and the system that made both catastrophes inevitable. George Tuff, who had survived the SS Greenland disaster as a sixteen-year-old in 1898, led the same number of men onto the same ice under the same conditions sixteen years later. Reuben Crewe froze to death holding his sixteen-year-old son Albert under his coat. Neither captain checked on the missing men for two days because the one ship that could have sent a message had its wireless ripped out. The inquiry found errors in judgment. No one was charged. Based on Cassie Brown's Death on the Ice, William Coaker's diary aboard the SS Nascopie, the Commission of Enquiry testimony, and the Ice Hunters research of Shannon Ryan. 📚 FURTHER READING Death on the Ice: The Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914 by Cassie Brown — https://geni.us/SxpKv The Ice Hunters: A History of Newfoundland Sealing to 1914 by Shannon Ryan (Breakwater Books, 1994) —https://geni.us/ft7L The Last of the Ice Hunters: An Oral History of the Newfoundland Seal Hunt by Shannon Ryan (Flanker Press, 2014) — https://geni.us/7wZvwR 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for new true survival stories Survival Instinct explores history's most extraordinary true stories of human endurance, maritime disasters, and survival against impossible odds. 🎵 Music: Original soundtrack created for this documentary ⚠️ DISCLAIMER: Some links in this description are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows me to continue creating free documentary content. Thank you! #newfoundland #sealing #maritime #survival The 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster and the loss of the SS Southern Cross killed two hundred and fifty-one men in a single season, forcing the reforms that should have followed the SS Greenland disaster of 1898. George Tuff survived both catastrophes and lost his brother William on the ice. Cecil Mouland lost both legs and his brother Arthur, whose body was never found. Labour leader William Coaker, aboard the Nascopie, asked the owners to recall the fleet out of respect for the dead. Their reply was to keep hunting seals. Every reform passed in 1916 could have been passed after 1898. It took two hundred and fifty-one dead and a union leader on the right ship before the system decided the men who did its work were worth protecting.