THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN THE AZORES 293 



or the colonial Cape Verders, were prepared to put up with the hard conditions then prevailing in the 

 whaleships : with indifferent food and low pay and inadequate sailing agreements, and with voyages 

 that grew longer and longer during the several decades of the decline. Between voyages many settled 

 in New England, for here the Azores expatriates, remarkable for their thrift and their warm regard for 

 their native islands, could still manage to send money to dependents at home. Domiciled abroad, or 

 at sea in the whaleships, they could also avoid the military conscription to which all Portuguese, unless 

 they paid in lieu a good sum of money, were liable until their 36th year (Walker, 1886, p. 112). By 1880 

 a third of the 3896 whalemen in the New Bedford fleet were Portuguese, and the Azores islanders 

 amongst them had so far established themselves in New Bedford that the section of the city where 

 they lived was called Fayal (Brown, 1887, p. 218). New Bedford was the last port to fit out the old 

 whaleships, and in 1949 I met two veteran whalemen, one in Santa Maria and one in Fayal, who had 

 lived in New Bedford in their youth and had sailed after Sperm whales from that port. Both were still 

 active as motor-launch enginemen in their shore fishery. 



In the last phase of deep-sea whaling, between 1900 and 1920, the Azores islanders enjoyed their 

 greatest influence in New Bedford ships, not so much in the forecastles (where berths were pre- 

 dominantly occupied by Cape Verders and West Indians), but on the quarter-deck where natives of 

 Fayal and Flores and Pico commonly made voyages as mates, and sometimes as masters. Four ships 

 recorded in Table 2 were commanded by Azoreans. The whaling voyage had by then reverted to the 

 short Atlantic cruise favoured by the plumpuddingers and the earlier whalers of the late eighteenth 

 century. On these short cruises and with slender and thrifty outfits, the Azores captains and part- 

 owners could still make a whaleship pay even in the years between 1900 and the First World War, 

 when the market for sperm oil had become quite limited. After 1921, however, it appears from Table 2 

 that no whaling vessel called at Fayal, and so far as the Western Islands ground was concerned this 

 year saw the end of the whaleship era. 



The technical section of this account will attempt to show how the Azores whalemen have retained 

 the American tradition in the use of whaleboats, boat gear, and whaling implements. But in the 

 ordinary conversation of the whalemen themselves lies a no less striking reminder of the origins of 

 their fishery. These men speak only Portuguese, but they have preserved from their forebears some 

 English words learned during the deep-sea voyages and representing the special vocabulary of their 

 trade. Ancient terms which elsewhere live only in the pages of old narratives can be heard in the 

 Azores today, sprinkling the Portuguese conversation of the whaleboat and the flensing platform. 

 Chaves (19246) and Figueiredo (1946) give some of these survivals of language, and I have overheard 

 several others from the whalemen. They are collected in Table 3. 



This glossary includes some of the more technical whaling terms, which will be explained in their 

 appropriate places. The Portuguese spellings of these Azores identities are virtually phonetic renderings 

 of the English words. Where equivalents in continental Portuguese exist they have been inserted, but 

 some of these are not precise, and such approximations have been queried. Several of the terms, like 

 'blackskin', 'junk', 'case', 'short-warp' and 'loggerhead', have no corresponding expression in 

 Portuguese; and there are others where the Portuguese equivalents exist, yet are not used by the 

 whalemen or may not be known to them. ' Stern-oar ' is such a word : its correct Portuguese rendering, 

 esparella or remo de esparella, is not in their vocabulary. There are three words, common in the fishery, 

 which have not been inserted in the table since they are currently in use on the continent, as in the 

 Azores. They are 'harpoon' (harpao, arpao), 'lance' (lanpa) and 'motor-launch' (gasolin-lancha). 

 ' Harpoon ' of course owes nothing to America, and indeed antedates the discovery of the New World ; 

 this word, appropriately enough for the symbol of all whaling, is derived from the ' arpoi ' of the early 

 Basques (Markham, 1881, p. 974). A curious feature of the glossary in Table 3 is that, although it 





