3 i2 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



way, at once decorative and functional, sets off the handsome appearance of these boats. In the 

 whaleship days sperm bone and ivory was sometimes used for a few of the blocks, belaying-pins and 

 other small gear in working the ship, but I have nowhere found in the literature any mention of scrim- 

 shaw fittings for the whaleboats, perhaps because these boats of the pelagic fishery (apart from those 

 smashed in the chase) got much knocked about during long voyages with limited shipwright attention, 

 and so were not decorated, as they could not be expected to last as long as those of the present shore 

 whaling venture. 



Following the regulations for fishing vessels generally, the Azores whaleboats have painted on their 

 bows identity letters and numerals, suffixed by 'P.B' for Pesca da baleia, or, simply, 'B' for Baleia. 

 Each boat has a name on the quarter, sometimes done in a gilt scroll. Favourite names are those of 

 saints or of relatives of the whaling owners. By this naming the boats acquire an individuality denied 

 to the anonymous boats carried in the whaleships. As an example of a shore whaling fleet there are 

 preserved in Table 8 (p. 326) the names of all the whaleboats and motor tow-boats sailing from Fayal in 

 1949, just as Table 2 preserves in another order of size the registry of whaleships from a vanished era. 



In its furnishings the present-day whaleboat keeps all the distinctive features of the nineteenth- 

 century model. The stem bears a conspicuous groove, the chocks, where the whaleline runs when fast 

 to a whale. The chocks may have a bronze or brass roller, or be bushed with some metal like lead, but 

 sometimes in Azores boats the chocks have a plain wood surface without liner. Abaft the chocks a 

 small triangular space, decked in and sunk below the gunwale, is called the box. When the boat is 

 hunting and the gear is in readiness, the box has coiled upon it several fathoms of the forward end of 

 the whaleline: this box-line, or box-warp, is the slack necessary when darting the harpoon, which is 

 fastened to the end of the box-line. Limiting the after edge of the box is a sturdy cross-plank set at 

 gunwale level. This is the clumsy cleat or thigh-board, its special feature being a semicircular notch 

 off-centre, where the harponeer braces his left thigh when he stands up to dart the iron. Occasionally 

 in Azores boats the notch (which is sometimes padded) is not off-centre but placed in the fore-and-aft 

 line, presumably for the convenience of a particular harponeer who can manage a left-handed or 

 right-handed dart with equal ease (Plate XIII). A little abaft the thigh-board on either side there are 

 the bow-cleats, two substantial fairleads swept up from the wood of the gunwale and directed forwards. 

 These bow-cleats are used in ' bowing-on a whale ', that is in veering the boat to tow parallel to a 

 fastened whale by bringing the taut whaleline from the chocks to the bow-cleat, so as to get in position 

 to use the lance. Bowing-on is a job for the bow-oarsman. In a boat fast to a whale, the bow-cleats 

 are also a safeguard, preventing a whaleline which may happen to jump the chocks from sweeping the 

 boat. This is especially important in the Azores where, so far as my experience goes, the chock-pin 

 and kicking-strap seem not to be employed, although they were universal in the old fishery. The 

 chock-pin was a slender wooden pin which helped to keep the whaleline towing in the chocks. The 

 kicking-strap was a short length of rope secured to each end of the clumsy cleat so that the whaleline, 

 stretched along the mid-line of the boat, passed under it. A line which had jumped the chocks and 

 had wrenched free of the kicking-strap would be arrested at the bow-cleats. A third use for the bow- 

 cleat, port or starboard, is as a fairlead for the line when ranging alongside a dead whale in order to 

 reeve the towing-strap (p. 323). 



In an Azores whaleboat there are six thwarts placed and nailed upon the risings, that is, the top 

 planks of the ceiling on each side. Proceeding aft, the thwarts may be named, harponeer, bow-, 

 midships-, line-, tub-, and after-thwart, according to the oarsmen who occupy them. The linesman 

 actually shares the tending of the line with others (the tub-, and after-oarsman), but this is a convenient 

 nomenclature. The American six-man boat had five thwarts, for there was no linesman. The seventh 

 man of the Azores boats, the officer or boatheader, called mestre in the Azores, has only standing room 



