THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN THE AZORES 295 



Starbuck, in a footnote (1878, p. 85), reports that the English statesman Pitt in 1785 said, 'the 

 Portuguese had now. . .a very pretty spermaceti-whale fishery, which they had learned from the New 

 Englanders, and carried on upon the coast of Brazil '. The Brazil ground had been established for 

 Sperm whaling in 1774, the business being prosecuted from whaleships well off the coast. Continental 

 Portugal furnished the ships and finance for its venture on this whaling ground but the whalemen 

 concerned were undoubtedly islanders from the Azores, possibly with some Cape Verders. The 

 attraction of the Azores whaleman to the Brazil enterprise may be partially considered as an aspect of 

 the long (and still surviving) tradition of emigration from the Azores to Brazil. This new Portuguese 

 whaling seemed to prosper at first, and efforts were made to exploit other grounds. Lopes records 

 that in 1798 D. Maria I, Queen of Portugal, raised a fleet to hunt whales and try out oil at sea along 

 the coasts of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique and the Cape Verdes. In later decades there were bounties, 

 like those offered at that time by the English government, for whaling ventures to the South Seas. 

 Two of these subsidized Portuguese voyages were those of the Speculacao and the Adventeur to New 

 Zealand in 1840 (McNab, 1913, p. 288). But the deep-sea industry never became established, and it 

 seems that by the 1860's the Portuguese whaleships were reduced to a few which cruised the Azores 

 ground in summer (Drouet). 



Some of these few ships were not from the Portuguese mainland, for, according to Faria e Silva and 

 Lima, the Azores islanders in 1875 themselves began to fit out vessels for the off-shore ventures. The 

 first was a French brig abandoned by the assurance company because of her poor condition: a company 

 was formed in Fayal to prepare her for whaling as the Cidade da Horta. Most likely she was the 

 'Portuguese whaling brig' which the cruiser Alabama, between the taking of the Starlight and the 

 Ocean Rover, chased off Flores in 1862, mistaking her for a Federal whaler (Semmes, 1869, p. 431). 

 Faria e Silva says there were never more than five local whaling vessels, but Macedo (1 871, 11, p. 281) 

 claims that Horta could at one time boast ten whaleships of her own. However, there was little money 

 available in the Azores, and the costs of maintaining whaleships, set against the successful and 

 economical shore whaling then being developed, discouraged the small island companies from directing 

 their own enterprise in the direction of deep-sea whaling. Perhaps as early as 1870 (according to 

 Faria e Silva), and certainly by the end of the century, the local Azores whaleships were all gone. 



The industry in continental Portugal continued to decline throughout the latter part of the nine- 

 teenth century. Shipowners could not be persuaded to accept whaling risks : the Azores whalemen, 

 few of whom were as yet preoccupied with the new shore industry, found ample and satisfactory 

 employment in the long voyages of American vessels. In 1862 and 1877 the last attempts were made 

 by the Portuguese government to persuade crews and shipowners, by special benefits, to enter the 

 fishery. Regulations of 1886 designed to implement these laws met with little response; and deep-sea 

 Sperm whaling everywhere was in any case a dying industry by this time. No whaleships from con- 

 tinental Portugal appear to have survived beyond 1900 at the latest, for they do not appear in the 

 register of ships calling at Horta (Table 2). 



The special interest of the Azores whaleman lies in the shore fishery, still surviving, established in 

 his own islands. But in the last century there were other shore whaleries overseas where he was active, 

 and mention of these may help to emphasize his widespread employment and substantial contribution 

 amidst the labours and hazards of nineteenth-century whaling. There was an early colonial venture in 

 East Africa in 1805, when Starbuck records that the Portuguese attempted to whale out of Mozambique 

 and employed New Englanders to take charge of the business. Presumably this was a seasonal shore 

 fishery for Humpback whales, like the steam whaling ventures which operated from Mozambique 

 more than a century later between 1910 and 191 5 (Mackintosh, 1942, p. 231). California was another 

 country where Azoreans were active in whaling. The lagoon fishery for the Californian Grey whale 



