A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)

Abstract

The history of commercial sealing and sealers’ lives can be understood within the context of capitalism. Sealing was traditionally carried out by different socio-cultural groups over time, mainly as a low-scale activity that attempted to meet the needs of specific communities (some examples including sealing by hunter-gatherers from Alaska and Tierra del Fuego, among others). In the late eighteenth and in the early nineteenth centuries, sealing acquired new features within the context of modernity, as it was transformed into a large- scale activity with a trading purpose. Commercial sealing responded to a market logic, and it helped to connect different contexts where the exploitation of resources, the manufacture of products, and trade in raw materials and industrial goods took place.In this chapter we will discuss who the ordinary sealers who made up the workforce of Antarctic sealing exploitation were, and how these people led their lives within the framework of the capitalist system in which they worked. With that aim in mind, in the first section of this work we will look at the recruitment and composition of the sealing crews, and the organization of their subsistence and work on board the sealing vessels. Although the ports of departure and the vessels were not part of the Antarctic territory, what happened at these locations is relevant to understanding these people’s existence during the voyages bound to Antarctica as a whole. In the second section we will examine the organization of sealers’ subsistence and work on the hunting grounds of the South Shetland Islands. For the sealing vessels and the Antarctic hunting grounds, we will consider the analysis of specific sets of practices involving work and subsistence, such as sailing, killing, and processing; and habitation, feeding, and clothing. Special attention will be paid to the degree of control that capitalist companies could have exercised over sealers’ practices.