288 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Other historians mention this letter. Serpa (1886, p. 24) and Lima (1940, p. 391) give much the 

 same rendering although Lima mentions a previous season, 1767. But their excerpts maintain a con- 

 fusion between whaleships and whaleboats, for Faria e Silva (1890, p. 541) gives the fishing strength 

 not as 200 ships but as 70 ships working 200 whaleboats, and altogether producing 20,000 barrels of 

 sperm oil and a great quantity of spermaceti. Actually the Nantucket fleet numbered 125 vessels, 

 averaging 75 tons burden, in 1768 (Starbuck, 1878, p. 174); some of these went north, so that 70 is 

 a reasonable estimate for those cruising off the Azores, but the total production for all Nantucket 

 vessels in that year was only 15,439 barrels, which makes Almada's production figures too high. 



English whalers at this time were occupied solely in the Greenland whale fishery, and by 'English 

 ships ' Almada meant the New England whalers, for North America was still a British possession at 

 that date. It is undisputed that the American colonists had the initiative as well as the monopoly in the 

 great Sperm whaling enterprise. Although later Britain was to be first after Sperm whales in the 

 Pacific, she did not enter the fishery for this whale until 1775 (Beale, 1839, p. 143). 



The catches to be made at the Western Islands were so good that whalers continued to frequent 

 them in spite of the depredations of French and Spanish privateers and pirates which infested the 

 whaling ground about the year 1770 (Starbuck, 1878, p. 53). By the end of the eighteenth century 

 visits to the Azores and cruises in the adjacent seas had become a customary part of Atlantic whaling 

 voyages. This practice persisted when the whaleships began to go farther afield, voyaging into the 

 Indian Ocean (first opened for Sperm whaling on the Madagascar grounds in 1789) and into the 

 Pacific which was rapidly exploited after the return of the British whaleship Amelia* in 1790. As the 

 nineteenth century progressed the Sperm whalers were increasingly attracted towards these oceans, 

 and the duration of their voyages was prolonged into years. But most of these southseamen included 

 some weeks or months in the North Atlantic cruising on the Western Islands or the Cape Verde 

 grounds, either at the beginning of a voyage, or on the way home to New England in the hope of 

 topping up a ship not quite full. Drouet, writing in 1861, states simply that all whaleships on their 

 way to more southerly grounds fished between America, Bermuda and the Azores, but specially round 

 the Azores, which were noted for large whales. 



Calls at these islands, and the cruising off them, are features of the published narratives of most 

 whaling voyages. Olmsted (1841) writes that the bark North America called at Fayal in 1839 at the 

 beginning of a South Sea voyage. J. R. Browne (1846) describes how the bark Styx\ took in the Azores 

 on the way to Zanzibar. Bullen (1901) cruised off the Cape Verdes before going on to Mozambique, 

 and Haley (1950, posthumous) visited both the Azores and the Cape Verdes in 1849 when bound for 

 Australian grounds. Ferguson (1936, posthumous) mentions that the bark Kathleen called at the 

 Azores in 1880, and having spent some time cruising there, sailed for the Gibraltar and Cape Verde 

 grounds, afterwards returning to the Azores to tranship what oil she had taken before starting for 

 Madagascar. The Kathleen was at the Azores again in 1900 (Table 2), but within two years was to be 

 rammed and sunk by a Sperm whale on the Twelve Forty ground in the tropical Atlantic. Almost a 

 century earlier, in 1807, the ship Union of Nantucket had met a similar end, and it was for Flores in 

 the Western Azores that the survivors from that whale-struck ship had set their course (Starbuck, 

 1878, p. 115). In the nineties Chippendale (1953) was several times in the Azores or cruising off them, 

 notably in the barks Canton and Sunbeam. Ashley (1926), who sailed in the Sunbeam in 1904, cruised 

 the Western Islands and Canaries grounds at the start of a voyage to the West Coast of Africa and the 

 South Indian Ocean. Finally may be mentioned the Ocean Rover which took in the Azores to fill her 



* Amelia is the usual spelling in the nineteenth-century literature, but according to Dakin (1934) the correct spelling is 

 Emelia, 



\ Styx seems to be a fictitious name for the vessel in which Browne sailed as a foremast hand. 



