THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN THE AZORES 287 



Consular Agent, a friend who has been untiring with ways to meet my many requests no less since 

 I left the islands than when he warmly supported my mission in 1949. 



At home I thank Dr F. C. Fraser, of the Natural History Museum, who has kindly read this account 

 in manuscript and who first told me, after his return from the voyage of the Atlantide (p. 305), that open 

 boat whaling still survives in the Azores. Finally I am especially grateful to Dr N. A. Mackintosh, 

 C.B.E., for sending me on this mission, for his advice and encouragement during the preparation of 

 this report, and for seeing it through the press during my absence overseas. 



THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN THE AZORES 



The historical material does not pretend to be exhaustive. Early records are fragmentary or deficient, 

 although I have been most fortunate in the special local assistance given by Senhor Jacinto Silviera de 

 Medeiros. The whaling statistics in the Appendix (Table 10) are from the Estatistica das Pescas 

 Maritimas no continente e ilhas adjacentes, an official compilation of all Portuguese fisheries statistics, 

 which is published annually. Its whaling records go back to 1896, and no earlier statistics are available 

 to me, except for some isolated figures for the Western Group 1886-90, given by Faria e Silva (1890). 

 The Estatistica das Pescas contains certain other notes on whaling material which I have found 

 useful. Otherwise my sources are scattered references in the narratives of Sperm whaling voyages 

 and in the Portuguese literature: a more ambitious account would have required perusal of the State 

 Papers of Portugal and a visit to the unique whaling libraries of New England. 



The whaleships. 1765-1921 



The hunting of Sperm whales on any commercial scale around the Azores was not at first undertaken 

 from the shore, but from the lowered boats of whaleships. Such cruising in the Azorean seas, called 

 by whalemen the ' Western Islands ground ', continued to the very last days of the deep-sea industry; 

 and shore whaling— established no earlier than the 1830's— did not become a serious competitor for 

 the local stock of whales until the end of the century. It seems that an occasional whale was captured 

 before the coming of the New England whaleships (p. 296), but the history of the shore fishery properly 

 begins with those Azores islanders who got their skill in these vessels and afterwards took the American 

 methods ashore, where, staying at home, they could still hunt from their steep volcanic coasts the whale 

 whose deep-water habit had previously led them to join protracted voyages into every ocean of the 



world. 



The commencement of Sperm whaling from the ports of New England has been well chronicled by 

 Macy (1835), Scammon (1874) and Starbuck (1878). By 1738 there had become established the 

 practice of fitting out vessels 'to whale out in the deep for Sperm whales', and the whalers pushed 

 farther and farther into the Atlantic Ocean, successively discovering new and lucrative cruising 

 grounds. Sperm whales were hunted off the Carolina coast, then off the Bahamas and West Indies 

 and in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Venturing eastward the whalers opened up the 

 coast of Guinea in 1763, the Azores ground in 1765, and afterwards and more southerly, the coast of 

 Brazil in 1774 (Macy, 1835). 



Soon after it was first exploited in 1765, the Western Islands ground became a profitable fishery. 

 Starbuck records that Nantucket whaleships in 1768 made a voyage to the Azores and by the middle 

 of September had obtained an average of 150 barrels for each ship. This season, impressive by the 

 standards of those days, is reported by D. Antao de Almada, Governor and Captain-General of the 

 Azores, in a letter dated 19 October 1768 to the minister Francisco Furtado. Chaves (19240) quotes 

 from Almada's letter that in this year there had been 200 English (sic) ships fishing in the latitude of the 

 islands, and they had each taken an average of 250 barrels of sperm oil and 100 barrels of spermaceti. 



