THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN THE AZORES 301 



land stations and from the few surviving whaleships. The first decade of this century was in fact a 

 reasonably profitable time for the shore whaleries, and the capital outlay on motor-boats must have 

 reflected this comfortable phase. But for a few years after 1910 the small market became glutted with 

 oil derived from the occasional attention paid to Sperm whales by the steam whaling industry, still 

 active in the north and already established and expanding in the new southern whaling centres of the 

 Sub-Antarctic and Antarctic. In consequence the Azores companies were faced with difficulties in 

 selling their oil and the catches declined. Table 1 shows that the archipelago accounted for 72-3 per 

 cent of the world catch of Sperm whales in 1910 but only 3-8 per cent by 191 5. But the reduction of 

 Allied whaling in the midst of the 1914-18 war (Fig. 2), combined with the increased war-time 

 demand for sperm oil, brought renewed prosperity to the Azores. Motor tow-boats, of which Fayal 

 had eight by 1918, were generally employed among the islands, and these must have combined with 

 the increased catching effort to produce the noticeable war-time increase in the Azores catch of 

 whales per whaleboat. 



The motor-boats have obvious advantages. When a blow has been raised from the cliffs a motor 

 tow-boat can rapidly take two or three whaleboats to the neighbourhood of the whale, whereas 

 formerly a stiff on-shore breeze might mean precious time occupied in miles of tacking, which could 

 lose them the whale before they were close enough for a dart. In this sense the effective range of the 

 whaleboats has become substantially extended. The close approach necessary for hand harpooning 

 means that the noise of an engine would frighten the quarry, so that motor tow-boats are never used 

 for the actual securing of whales, but during the hunt they are invaluable for giving short tows to the 

 questing whaleboats, for bringing up spare whaleline in emergency, for assisting damaged boats, and 

 for prolonging the hours of chase available to whaleboats which would otherwise be benighted. 

 Finally the motor-boats tow the dead whales back to the whaling station, a distance perhaps of twenty 

 or more miles : this was formerly a weary back-breaking task for whaleboats under oars, pulling with 

 the likelihood of being benighted off a hard coast, and with the possibility of worsening weather and 

 subsequent loss of a hard-won prize. 



It is an arresting contrast of the period 1920-30 that in these years, when the general employment 

 of motor tow-boats gave the old-fashioned whaleries their first aspect of modernity, the Azores 

 whalemen finally abandoned the occasional employment of firearms in fastening and killing whales 

 and used exclusively the trusted and primitive weapons of the whaling trade, the hand harpoon and 

 lance. As early as 173 1 Britain was the first nation to introduce harpoon-guns into whaling; these 

 were unsuccessful, but there were swivel-guns employed satisfactorily in British whaleboats at the 

 Northern Right whale fishery after 1772 (Scoresby, 1820, 11, p. 70), although they never became 

 popular until the 1850's. Such pieces of ordnance were practicable in this fishery, whaling in ice bays 

 of the summer Greenland Sea, but when the New England whalemen in 1846 first turned their 

 attention to firearms, they developed not swivel-guns but small-arms, which were handier and more 

 accurate in the open weather of ocean Sperm whaling. By the 1870's each American boat usually 

 carried a shoulder-gun, a supply of bomb-lances, and a darting-gun in addition to the hand weapons. 

 The shoulder-gun fired a small lance fitted with a bomb, and was used to kill a whale which had 

 previously been fastened with the hand harpoon. The darting-gun was a hand harpoon ingeniously 

 combined with a stockless gun-barrel which automatically discharged a bomb-lance as soon as the 

 harpoon iron fastened. Bomb-lances were so useful in securing a quick kill and in mitigating the perils 

 of whaling that by 1874 the hand harpoon was rapidly going out of practice in American whaleboats 

 and in 1887 was kept only for emergencies (Scammon, 1874, p. 228; Brown, 1887, p. 252). The Azores 

 shore whaling business took over firearms with the rest of American gear and methods. In the 

 Estatistica das Pescas there are lists of catching equipment where carabinas and espingardas are 



