Word: swilers
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...hands of their natural enemy-man. Their white coats have long been prized for boot and glove trimmings and for fur jackets. In the gulf, a horde of hunters invade the floes on foot, by boat, on ski-equipped planes and in recent years by helicopter. Hundreds of sealers-"swilers" in the Newfoundland dialect-conduct a brief but grimly efficient slaughter. With stout oak clubs they move systematically through the herd, beating the whitecoats to death with raps on the skull. Only if a hulking 300-lb. cow seal chooses to fight for her baby will a swiler sometimes spare...
Outrageously Inappropriate. A veteran swiler can complete a kill in less than a minute. The hunter, his face smeared with seal blood to cut down ice glare and prevent chapping, grabs a 60-lb. pup by a hind flipper, whacks it on its soft skull, spins the pup over, punctures the throat and then neatly skins away pelt, flippers and blubber with swift strokes of a razor-sharp knife. The process commences at dawn, continues until dark and turns the once pristine ice into an ugly palette of dirtied snow, crimson blood sprays and grotesquely skinned carcasses. Watching this month...
With sirens screaming and bunting gay in the rigging, a dozen stout-planked ships had slipped through the Narrows of St. John's Harbor and out of sheltered northern ports. If they came back in four to eight weeks with prime pelts stowed fore & aft, every swiler would get around $200 apiece for his voyage. If they came back clean, both they and the merchants who backed them would get nothing. As always, the hunt was a gamble...
Newfoundland law forbids the sealing fleet to put out until March 8, when the seals' whelping season is over. Then St. John's sends the ships off, each jammed by 100 to 300 swilers, with cheers, bunting, band music and cannon fire. Swilers work on shares and the trip to the seal herds is a bitter race. Arrived, the swilers swarm out over the ice with their long, hooked gaffs, begin bashing in seals' skulls right & left. Swilers never shoot seals, except in self-defense against an angry, sharp-toothed male, but they sometimes make...
...that time, Miss Googins & mother were in Burlington. Iowa, at the home of her uncle, a banker named George C. Swiler. Mr. Swiler, on Saturday, got a marriage license for the young couple and the fateful news was at last out. The night before Elliott and Anna Dall drove in from Chicago. That afternoon he and Miss Googins, refreshed by a swim, were married by a retired Congregationalist minister (the Roosevelts are Episcopalians), on the Swiler lawn overlooking the Mississippi. The bride wore white georgette crepe. The groom, who also received a ring, wore flannel trousers, camel's hair...
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