202 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Miguel did not last, for Horta also got its breakwater and (except for some competition from Dominica 

 and Las Palmas in the final decade 1910-20) retained its standing as a premier port for transhipment 

 and provisioning right to the lingering end of the old-time whaling. This is strikingly shown in Table 2, 

 a register of whaleships and their associated provision and oil transports which called at Horta between 

 1900 and 192 1. This table, except for a few added remarks, has been compiled by Senhor Jacinto 

 Silviera de Medeiros. All the vessels wore the American flag except the British Planet. They include 

 most of the whalers still sailing in those last years, and several of them (some already mentioned in this 

 account) were famous in whaling history. September was the season when the whaleships assembled 

 at Horta, and the remarkable photograph reproduced in Plate XIII shows that even as late as 1910 

 the harbour could present a lively prospect of sails, crossed spars and hoisted boats. Ships in the 

 register for 19 10 can be identified in Plate XIII, for Senhor Medeiros, who provided this photo- 

 graph,* has also been able to name the vessels. The bark Wanderer and the schooner John R. Manta 

 were later to be the last vessels to clear for Sperm whaling. The Wanderer was wrecked with the voyage 

 scarcely begun outside New Bedford harbour at Cuttyhunk on 26 August 1924. In the following year 

 the John R. Manta made a voyage from New Bedford to the Hatteras ground. With her return, and 

 the return of the schooner Margarett also in 1925 from a longer cruise, the old-time whaling voyages 

 were ended (Ashley, 1926, p. 117; Tripp, 1938). The brigantine Viola, on her maiden voyage when the 

 photograph in Plate XIII was taken, was the last vessel designed and built specially as a Sperm whaler. 

 Famous for her graceful lines, the Viola made four Atlantic voyages, each time taking in the Azores 

 ground, until in September 1918 she sailed for a fifth but was never seen again. On this tragic voyage 

 her captain was an Azores islander, Joseph Lewis (Jose Luiz) of Horta (Cook, 1926, pp. 338 ff. ; 

 Medeiros, unpublished). 



The islanders from the first showed themselves able recruits to the industry, and quickly learned 

 the special skills and methods of Sperm whaling. All those authors whose narratives I have mentioned 

 commend the readiness and proficiency of the Azoreans, not so much as seamen, but as look-outs, 

 boatmen and harponeers — properly, that is, as whalemen. Ashley (1926, p. 5) has explained this suc- 

 cess of the islander in whaling : ' Being nearly all islanders, brought up from childhood with oars in 

 their hands, they were eminently suited to the purpose; for boatmen, not seamen, are required in the 

 whale fishery.' 



By the 1840's, when the American fishery was at its peak, the writings of Olmsted (1841), J. R. 

 Browne (1846), Cheever (1851) and Melville (1851) show that the Azores whalemen were established 

 as part of the Sperm whaling scene. Even in 1839 the North America had six ' Portuguese ' in her total 

 ship's complement of thirty-one (Olmsted, 1841) and in 1846 Browne records that when the Styx 

 cleared from the Azores she had twice as many Azores sailors as Americans in her forecastle. A pas- 

 sage written about 1855 summarizes the islanders' position in American whaling in the mid-century 

 (Nordhoff, 1941, p. 209, posthumous): 



A great many Western Island Portuguese find employment in American whalemen (sic), almost every vessel 

 sailing from New Bedford carrying more or less of them. They are a quiet, peaceful, inoffensive people, sober and 

 industrious, penurious, almost to a fault, and I believe invariably excellent whalemen. 



Writing in 1861, Drouet said that most of the young men in the Azores chose to ship as whalemen 

 if they could. A decade or so later, when the fishery had declined, the Azoreans bulked larger even 

 than before, and some sailed as officers in the whaleships. 



I am not here concerned with the causes of the decline of Sperm whaling; these have been variously 

 analysed by Starbuck (1878, p. 113), Hohman (1928, chs. xm and xiv), Harmer (1928, pp. 63-4) and 

 Brandt (1940, ch. xiv). What is important to the present study is that the Portuguese, either Azoreans 



* Taken by Senhor Goulart of Horta. 



