The seal hunt has for decades been an activity of utmost controversy. In light of its perceived cruelty, also the European Union has adopted a ban which prohibits the trade in seal products, resting on the assumption that the hunt is inherently cruel and that non-indigenous sealers do not benefit sufficiently from it – culturally and economically – that it could in any way be justified. Interestingly, however, this assumption is not based on empirical data, but rather on information by and large produced by organisations opposed to the seal hunt. Ethnographic data draws a different picture and places the seal hunt within a context of community integrity and socio-economic relevance (Sellheim Reference Sellheim2015).

In how far the seal hunt plays a role in the self-understanding of Eastern Canadian rural communities show the most recent publications on the seal hunt that were published by Québecois and Newfoundland publishers (for example Gillett Reference Gillett2015; Menge Reference Menge2016) of which the present volume Perished has for some reason gone unnoticed albeit its publication already in 2013. Two reasons may to some degree justify this oversight: first, for a scholar familiar with the Newfoundland seal hunt of the past and present the book does not hold much new information; second, it is a book whose target audience is not necessarily the academic world, but rather lay persons and those very broadly interested in Newfoundland (sealing) history. That being said, there is no doubt in my mind that this book is truly unique. Essentially, it follows William Coaker, the leader of the Union Party of Newfoundland who joined the seal hunt on Nascopie in the sealing season of spring 1914 – the year the colony experienced its greatest disasters with a loss of more than 270 lives: the Newfoundland and Southern Cross disasters in which the former lost more than 70 men on the ice due to miscommunication and absence of modern equipment due to financial reasons, and the latter sinking along with its entire crew upon its return from to Newfoundland's capital St. John's from the seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (see also Brown Reference Brown1988). Higgins skillfully inserts what has become known as ‘Mr Coaker's Log’, a series of log-entries as published in the Daily Mail between 11 April to 17 April 1914 into the narratives of the seal hunt. Providing insight into the living and working conditions of a sealer, the economy and processing of the seal, and as the title implies, the prelude, ‘main act’ and the aftermath of the Newfoundland disaster, the book does this with little, but poignant text. To get a better, indeed, tangible experience of that time, the book contains numerous photographs, reproductions of maps and logbooks, telegrams and other materials which are inserted in the book in envelopes or as unfoldable ‘goodies’ (for lack of a better word). With this in mind, it would even appear reasonable to assume that the target audience of the book are school children who are supposed to get an interest in sealing history.

Not surprisingly, the lively design and make-up of the book earned the author the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing in 2014, a prize to ‘to honor an outstanding work of non-fiction that promotes awareness of, and appreciation for, an aspect of the history of the Atlantic Provinces” (Atlantic Book Awards 2014). Indeed, I would fully support this book as falling under these criteria and, this may sound slightly polemic and somewhat out of place in a journal such as Polar Record, I several times caught myself thinking while going through this book: ‘Wow, this is just cool.’ This reaction is particularly interesting in this context, simply because the book deals with two very serious issues at the same time: the disaster with significant human loss and the seal hunt – one of the most controversial hunts in the world. But be that as it may, it shows that the author has managed to get the reader enthralled, to get him or her captivated by the seal hunt and to paint a picture of the sealers that goes way beyond notions of ‘barbarism’ or ‘cruelty’. In fact, the book deals exclusively with the people, a very rare thing to find in the context of seal hunting.

Let me conclude by saying that even though I would consider myself being very familiar with the Newfoundland seal hunt, this book was a special experience. Not because of the information it held, but because of the way the basic information on the seal hunt and the Newfoundland disaster was conveyed. For research purposes scholars should, however, turn to works such as Shannon Ryan's The ice hunters (Ryan Reference Ryan1994). For educational purposes, Higgins’ work is indispensable.