294 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



includes English names for several species of whales, none the less the English generic word of their 

 fishery is unknown to the islanders: a 'whale' to them is baleia, and by this term they mean, not any 

 whale, but the Sperm whale, the only species they systematically hunt ; they only say Cachalote when 

 distinguishing the Sperm whale from other species. 



The knowledge and experience gained by the Azores islanders in American ships was first put to 

 use in the service of independent national enterprise, not in shore whaling from their own coasts, but 

 in Portuguese whaling ventures on the seas adjacent to the colonial possessions of Portugal. The ships 

 of the American whale fishery did not touch at the coast of Portugal, and no skilled whaling tradition 



Table 3. Glossary of whaling terms in English, currently used by 

 Azores whalemen, and derived from the Americans 



was ever properly established among the continental Portuguese. It is true that shore whaling in 

 Portugal was a recognized fishery by the reign of D. Pedro I (1357-67), but Lopes (1938) points out 

 that this whaling was prosecuted entirely by the Basques, who during the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries obtained leave to extend their hunt for Right whales from the Bay of Biscay southward to 

 the coasts of Spain and Portugal. The continental Portuguese themselves had no appetite for whaling, 

 and there was little or no response to the various protective concessions by which the sovereigns of 

 Portugal hoped to encourage their nationals. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the 

 Azores islanders had become proficient in Sperm whaling, and the prospects of their employment in 

 Portuguese ships gave renewed encouragement to those who wished to see a national enterprise 

 competing with America and Britain in the sperm oil industry. 



