Gustav Hansen, the Flying Dutchman

Romantic though it may seem to some today, Victoria’s famous sealing industry was a brutal business.

From Victoria Harbour they sailed to the northern seal rookeries, risking storms and the navies of three nations.

To put the historic sealing industry in thumbnail perspective, Victoria Harbour History tells us: “The thick fur of the northern fur seal pelts Nuu-cha-nuth seafarers brought in trade to Fort Victoria in the 1840’s caught the attention of Hudson’s Bay Company traders.

The Vagabond Fleet

Soon March became a month of economic boom for Victoria as the great fur seal herd was hunted as they migrated past Vancouver Island. They were on their way to their Alaskan summer breeding grounds in the Pribilof Islands. In 1894, 59 pelagic (open sea) sealing schooners operated out of Victoria, employing 518 aboriginal and 818 non-aboriginal people. In 1897 nearly 100,000 pelts passed through Victoria.” —https://www.victoriaharbourhistory.com/stories-from-around-the-harbour/harvesting/sealing/

I said it was a brutal business and indeed it was, not only for the poor seal, ultimately slaughtered almost to extinction, but for the seamen who braved distant and dangerous seas to follow their elusive prize. It took men—real men—like Capt. Viktor Jacobsen, to name one.

Then there were the sealers of a different cloth who sailed from Victoria.

This tiny fraternity thumbed their noses at more than storm and killing fog: little obstacles like international law and three navies!

Rogues like Capt. Alex McLean, the legendary ‘Sea Wolf’ (Link: The Real Man Behind Jack London’s Legendary ‘Sea Wolf’ – September 16, 2021) whom we’ve met before in these pages. Then there was Capt. Gustav Hansen who also achieved notoriety if not lasting fame as the ‘Flying Dutchman’.

He’s the second outlaw to carry this title in British Columbia. And, like Henry Wagner, his fellow ‘Flying Dutchman,’ Gustav Hansen, perhaps not surprisingly, came to a sad end.

* * * * *

Although a legend the length of the West Coast in his lifetime, today there’s little record of Hansen’s sometimes amazing exploits. But the scant files on record show that Hollywood has overlooked an honest-to-goodness, latter-day buccaneer with all the glamour of a Capt. Kidd or Blackbeard.

With the single exception that Gustav Hansen had a heart of gold when it came to dealing with fellow men. Well...with most fellow men.

To explain this apparent conflict in career and character, we must go back to the beginning when the scent of easy money first lured Hansen to Pacific Northwest waters, about 1878. It was rumoured that he made his first money by smuggling Chinese immigrants to these shores.

But when it became known that fortunes were to be made, before pelagic sealing passed from being an international free-for-all to closed competition, Hansen was among the first to smell opportunity despite the fact that American warships jealously guarded Alaskan territorial waters and the Tsar’s Imperial Navy watch-dogged that nation’s icebound shores against intrusions by foreign sealers.

Confiscation of ships, heavy fines and/or imprisonment were the price of trespassing. For second offenders, the Russians promised a fate worse than death, a journey (usually one-way) to the dreaded salt mines of Siberia.

Sometimes without so much as a hearing.

While these arbitrary threats proved to be a poor deterrent to the hardy sealers, they seemed almost to encourage the daring Capt. Hansen. As longtime Victoria newspaper marine reporter Frank Kelley once observed, “Hansen was the sort of man who would sooner get money by unorthodox methods then by honourable means, no matter how easily it might be earned at the time...

“There was no risk too great for this astute and courageous rascal.”

His five-man crew were of the same reckless cut. Armed with double-barrelled shotguns, this merry band of freebooters sailed Hansen’s 35-foot, 35-ton schooner Adele, a former Shanghai pilot boat, into stormy northern seas to boldly challenge the American and Russian navies.

It was about 1890 that Adele slipped from Shanghai under the German flag, bound for the Bering Sea rookery of St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs. When she hove to offshore, Hansen and crew landed in two boats. All went according to plan at first, the poachers coolly battering seals to death left and right.

They’d collected 80 prime pelts by the time the shore patrol spotted them.

Rifle bullets shrieking overhead, they ran for the boats and rowed desperately for their schooner. It had been a close call. Not so close, however, that the raiders abandoned their furs.

Saner men would have turned to more honest—and safer—pursuits. But not the buccaneers of the Adele. Two weeks later, under cover of a raging gale, Hansen again anchored off St. Paul. This time they landed on the opposite side of the island. By dawn, they had 400 skins. When the guards finally caught on to the slaughter, a laughing Hansen had Adele running before a brisk wind.

Never one to abandon a profitable business, when next we hear of Gustav Hansen, he was back sealing—at St. Paul. As one early story of his exploits understates, “This was an impertinent affair.

“Armed with...shotguns, the sealers landed in the night with fog augmenting the darkness and as daylight neared they surprised the guard[s], then engaged in preparing breakfast. While some of the raiders stood guard over the Aleuts—to who[m] Hansen gave a jar of rum he had brought ashore—the raiders broke into the salt houses where skins taken by the natives lessees had been baled for shipment and made off with much more than 1000 skins...”

To cheekily register them in Victoria as “from Behring Sea”!

Between voyages, Capt. Hansen would paint Victoria red. Not one to save or invest his ill-gotten gains, he’d embark on a drinking spree which would last until he was broke again. Much of it, he gave to any seaman down on his luck. No mater what else people thought of him, they had to admit that he “never refused a ‘touch’--if he happened to possess the where-withal”.

Then it was back to the Adele, to play his banjo and delight audiences with tales of his daring deeds on the high seas, until once again it was time to sail for some mysterious destination.

Once, the American Revenue cutters Richard Rush and Bear found him in forbidden waters. It must have been towards evening because Hansen waited until dark then made his escape. But unlike the Arabs, he wasn’t a man to fold his tent and silently steal away. Almost within earshot of the unsuspecting cutters, he proceeded to take 491 seals.

By dawn, he was well on his way towards the Japanese coast.

Hence his title, the Flying Dutchman.

But even Gustav Hansen’s phenomenal luck had to end; poor Adele pounded to pieces on the rocky Queen Charlotte Islands when her anchors dragged in a gale. Two years later, with the schooner Emma, he later recalled, “I was seized by the Russians off Saghallen Island and with my crew of 10 men taken to Vladivostock.

“Here we were kept prisoners for six months without being given a hearing. At the end of that time we were all suffering from scurvy.

“When at last we were tried, it was to be sentenced to four months additional imprisonment. I knew I could not stand any more of the Russian grub without becoming an invalid for the rest of my days, and as luck would have it, the day we were sentenced an English and a Japanese steamer in harbour were ready to sail that night.

“Money will do almost anything with a Russian sub-officer, and I succeeded in bringing the guards [into] allowing me us to reach the steamers.

“Five of the men stowed away on the English steamer while myself and the five others were secreted on the Japanese ship, all hands being safely landed in Yokohama.”

Undaunted by this enforced vacation, Hansen was soon back in business. If he’d learned anything from his stay in the rat-infested jail, it was to leave the Russians alone—for a while. This voyage, he’d pay his respects to the Americans.

This was his most ambitious scheme to date.

But, again, his luck had soured. It was Hansen’s intention to raid the Alaska Commercial Co.’s salt houses. He shrewdly timed his arrival for the end of the season, just before the skins were shipped to St. Louis, when the warehouses would be crammed with prime skins.

Unfortunately, they also proved to be well stocked with guards. There was no buying their freedom this time; Hansen and crew found themselves in the Sitka lock-up.

There are three versions of what followed:

The first says that Hansen was convicted and sentenced to a lengthy stay in the stockade, his schooner confiscated. Then, goes this sorry tale, a chastened Flying Dutchman swallowed the anchor, choosing a quieter life ashore to further adventures on the high seas.

The second telling is more to our liking and in keeping with Hansen’s record. According to this version, it was the U.S. Revenue cutter Corwin that made the capture: “A prize crew was put on board the schooner, instructed to take the vessel to Sitka for seizure, and there the raiders were to be tried.

“However, Hansen and his crew managed to surprise the prize crew a few days later and its members accepted the alternative of being given a boat to enable their landing on the Alaskan coast as against a voyage to Victoria.”

This sounds more like our Capt. Hansen!

A third story is along the same line. Taken to Sitka, the poachers managed to break jail, reach their impounded schooner, cut her free, and slip out of harbour to freedom.

Whichever the case, Hansen was back in circulation, albeit with a price on his head.

When next our shady hero made news, it was in the role of injured innocence.

“Capt. Gustav Hensen, commonly known as the ‘Flying Dutchman,’ ‘piratical sealer,’ ‘poacher of seal rookeries,’ etc., is on the way to Victoria,” reported an 1896 Colonist. He arrived in Portland some days ago on the steamer Mount Lebanon, having left his schooner, the Josephine, at Yokohama, that he might proceed to Victoria and collect $12,369 which he claims to be due him under the modus vivendi for constructive damages for having been driven out of Behring Sea and thus prevented from sealing.”

(This was 14 years before the Pelagic Sealing Treaty which was formulated to “manage the commercial harvest of fur-bearing animals”. Formally known as the North Pacific Seal Convention of 1911, it was signed by the United States, Great Britain (on Canada’s behalf), Russia and Japan. This “first international treaty to address wildlife preservation issues” resulted in some monetary reparations for commercial sealers who lost their source of income but this was long after Gustav Hansen had left the scene.

What became of Hansen’s claim—outrageous when considering its author—isn’t recorded.

When ill-luck continued to plague our buccaneer, he decided to turn his talents to a new—and alien—field of endeavour: honest toil.

Terrible blow thought it must have been to Hansen’s pride, still, it was in keeping with his adventurous soul. At sea or ashore, Hansen was forever chasing rainbows, the quick if not easy money. This time, he was after a lost mine.

With veteran prospector Jack Donahue (aka Donohue) for partner, and the occasional grubstake from Village island storekeeper Amos Ellis, a former sealer, Hansen poked about the rugged fjords of Vancouver Island’s northwestern coast. None of his claims came to much, the lost mine remained lost.

As evidence of the extent to which the Flying Dutchman had mellowed, he embarked on the sea of matrimony, marrying a Kyuquot (Ka:’yu:k’th/Che:k’tles7eth’ First Nations, pronounced Kie-you-cut and Tsheh-kleh-szet) woman.

When not at home or prospecting, Hansen enjoyed visiting his old mates aboard visiting ships. “In those days, a majority of Canadian Pacific Navigation Company’s skippers and deck officers were ex-sealers, particularly on the west coast run.

“Whenever the old Tees dropped anchor at Village Island in the winter months, Hansen would be a regular visitor, renewing acquaintance with Capt. Jack Townsend or Capt. Ed Gillam and, as it sometimes happened, when discretion was the better part of chance-taking on stormy nights and the Tees rested, passenger were regaled with round, unvarnished tales Hansen had apparently lived in his time.

“In the telling of them there were no hints of braggadocio, even when the memory was loosened some with a brand labelled ‘White Horse.’

A storyteller’s best friend, White Horse whisky. —*www.thewiskyexchange.com*

Gustav Hansen was now a walking example of respectability; no more was his name linked with midnight sailings and mysterious doings in northern seas. In fact, the only apparent link with his colourful past was a charge of breaking and entering a private home at Kyuquot. Held aboard the steamship Willapa, the informal hearing (very informal as all participants were said to be “well-primed”) came to the conclusion it was a misunderstanding and the charge was dropped.

Firstly, because the lack of a door cancelled the breaking half of the charge, secondly, because of the fact he was a “frequent and welcome visitor” discounted the entering clause.

Then it was back to mining. One adventure of this period, an incredible tale of shipwreck and suffering occurred at forbidding Cape Cook at the northwestern end of Vancouver Island. Prospecting with two companions, Hansen was amazed when 10 emaciated men, survivors of the sunken Peruvian bark Libertad, staggered into his camp.

The seamen would have perished but for their chance finding of his camp.

Hansen and his companions risked starvation and drowning to save the Peruvians. As has been mentioned, the Flying Dutchman may have been rascal but he never refused a helping hand.

Ironically, Gustav Hansen was to die at sea within a month of his heroic rescue of the Libertad’s crew. Returning from some claims at Kashutyl Inlet with Jack Donahue, his dog and James Moir (or Moyer), one stormy January night, their small canoe capsized, plunging all into the wild surf.

Donahue luckily reached a rock where he clutched the dog to his chest to keep warm. Somehow he clung to the frigid perch until morning when storekeeper Ellis’s sister-in-law spotted him. The young woman launched her canoe in the foaming breakers and rescued the weakening prospector. Donahue subsequently married his lovely saviour and they had a long and happy relationship.

But Gustav Hansen and James Moir/Moyer were gone.

When last Donahue had seen him, Hansen was swimming strongly for the beach. But when the storm had passed, he wasn’t to be seen.

“It was not until that spring that Hansen’s body was found floating near Village island,” Frank Kelley wrote, “and I’m sure if he had his choice he would ask for no finer resting place than the grassy knoll of the little island, near the mouth of Claninik Harbour, looking out over the Pacific on which he had been a bit of a free-booter when seal rookeries might be raided and salt houses broken into—more for devilment than riches.”

The Kyuquots thought highly of the once-notorious Flying Dutchman, burying him with the rites of a chief. For years, a totem pole marked his grave, within sight of the sea he and carefree Adele had conquered with a few reckless comrades and sheer daring.

*****

I mentioned that there have been two Flying Dutchmen in British Columbia history. The other, later ‘Dutchman,’ Henry Wagner, claimed to have ridden with the notorious Plummer outlaw gang before most of them were dispatched by vigilantes.

He survived and turned up on Vancouver Island where he began a series of raids on coastal communities. In 1913, he and partner Bill Julian hit Union Bay for a second time. But two provincial police officers were standing guard in the town’s general store and in the ensuing gunfight, Constable Westaway was killed.

Hence Wagner’s departure from the provincial scene at the end of a hangman’s rope in Nanaimo.

Have a question, comment or suggestion for TW? Use our Contact Page.