The Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Characteristically romantic Canada has taken this seal hunt business and plunged it back into the eighteenth century with a swashbuckling episode of piracy on the high seas.

You may be accustomed, as I am, to the same boring news items about the annual seal hunt that occurs somewhere on Canada’s east coast. Seals get clubbed and skinned alive and whatnot by seal fishermen wearing black wool caps. Environmentalists, drifting offshore in colourfully-named boats, take videos of this. The videos are sent to Sir Paul McCartney, who writes angry letters to the Canadian federal government. The Canadian federal government issues a statement saying that it received the letter, and not much else. The cycle repeats.

Whatever your opinion of the seal hunt, there is a fine Canadian tradition of steering the media focus away from the seals, hunters and camera-happy environmentalists. This year, we’ve taken a cue from the success of the Internet and jazzed up the whole affair by the addition of: pirates.

The gist of the story so far seems to be that the Dutch-registered vessel Farley Mowat is alleged to have sailed too close to the seal hunt without a permit (yes, the Canadian government charges admission), prompting the ever-vigilant RCMP to board them, brandishing submachine guns and hauling them off to jail to stand trial. The captain of the vessel claims this was an act of piracy, as they were in international waters (which will be confirmed by the GPS equipment seized by the government), and that the crew and observers (environmentalists with video cameras) were stripped of their possessions and thrown out onto the street. Paul Watson, leader of the Sea Shepherds (who bears a striking resemblance to a walrus, especially with those tusks) backs up his captain, although he wasn’t aboard, or nearby. Farley Mowat, Canadian naturalist author and native of Saskatchewan, for whom the boat was named, was available for comment, and supports the seal hunt protesters so far as to put up their bail money.

It is perhaps notable that, as related in his book Owls in the Family, as a young boy Mr. Mowat would snare prairie dogs by means of a hand-operated noose placed around the exit holes of their underground burrows, which serve much the same function as seals’ breathing holes in the subarctic ice. I guess that was then, and this is now.

Let’s have a look at the flag that Paul Watson’s group, the Sea Shepherds, flies on their vessels.

Nope, no pirates here.

So… a Dutch vessel flying that flag sailing at least very close to Canadian waters, possibly inside them, is boarded, by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Although they almost certainly are not, we can imagine them wearing their trademark bright red coats, as the last seriously-armed agents of the Crown who do so, descending from ropes onto the deck of the Farley Mowat, submachine guns tucked under their arms.

No. No, that’s not right at all. Give them sabres and cutlasses. That’s better.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, arrayed in the red coats of the British Crown, brandishing sabres and cutlasses, alighted on the deck of the Dutch motor vessel Farley Mowat. Demanding to see their letters of marque authorizing them to sail these waters, they were met by an unarmed crew some of whom barricaded themselves below deck. A struggle ensued, and possibly a swordfight.

Am I the only one who finds it terribly amusing that a foreign vessel in Canadian waters, or at least close enough to videotape people and seals on the coast, is boarded by authorized agents of the Crown and calls it an act of piracy?

Let’s examine the definition of piracy, from The Sailor’s Word-Book (Adm. William Henry Smyth, 1867): “Depredation without authority, or transgression of authority given, by despoiling beyond its warrant. … By common law, piracy consists in committing those acts of robbery and depredation upon the high seas, which, if committed on land, would have amounted to felony, and the pirate is deemed hostis humani generis.” Well then, really the only answer to the question lies in where the vessel was when it was boarded. Thankfully, those records are safely in the hands of the… boarders. Oh, dear.

To further confound matters, the Canadian government has a history of keeping the Rule Britannia alive by boarding foreign vessels in questionable circumstances. In 1995 we seized a Spanish fishing vessel harvesting Turbot in an area where we like to fish. The Spanish government, predictably, accused the Canadian government of piracy, despite an established reputation for ignoring international law in their fishing practices which more closely fits the definition given above. The issue at that time was, once again, where the vessel was: whether or not it was inside or outside the 200-mile fishing territory limit.

Canada is admittedly not very good at defining its borders, externally or internally. We’ve been arguing with the Russians for ages about whether we or they have claim to the North Pole, somewhere beneath the Arctic Ocean. And on all our wall maps, in all our atlases in high school, the all-too-squiggly border between Labrador and Quebec, which is on land, was footnoted as “under dispute.”

Dear God, and we’re boarding civilian vessels, armed with submachine guns?

I’m mildly curious to see how this plays out. Oh, I already know what happens to the seals. I just want to know whether or not Farley Mowat will be forever remembered as a pirate financier, and of course what happens to the walrus man.

Recommended listening: The Last Saskatchewan Pirate and The Mountie Song by The Arrogant Worms.