THE PRESENT SURVIVAL OF OPEN BOAT WHALING 343 



from the town or village, just as all whaling stations elsewhere in the world, treating the whole carcass, 

 are isolated for hygienic reasons. Working up (that is, saving the whale in the modern sense) is mostly 

 done by a special factory staff, whereas the whaleboatmen at try-works stations do all the cutting in 

 and trying out with no shore-side assistance. Although the cooking equipment is similar to that at any 

 shore whaling station overseas, the Azores modern factories merit description because the platform 

 whalemen have adapted the traditional methods of the cutting spade to the employment of the steam 

 winch, developing an independent technique of flensing and butchering which differs markedly from 

 Norwegian practice. 



I am best acquainted with the procedure at Reis e Martins Lda.'s station at Porto Pirn outside 

 Horta, Fayal, where most of my time in the Azores was spent. A low isthmus, with the bay called 

 Porto Pirn on its west side, runs south from Horta, and the whaling station is built (Fig. 5) where the 

 isthmus abruptly terminates in the high steep sides of Monte da Guia. The flensing platform is partially 

 cut from the hillside and is bounded here by a high unfenced wall at whose top grazing cattle look 

 down upon the platform. A steep cobbled slipway runs down to the water where ringbolts are fixed 

 for securing whales hove to the slip (see Plate XVI, Figs. 5 and 6). A stone bridge spans the slipway 

 and carries the path which leads round the flanks of Monte da Guia to the old try-house farther along 

 the bay. The slipway rises to the flensing platform, which is an enclosed square courtyard with a cemented 

 floor sloping unevenly downwards. Blood is drained from the platform by a system of gutters leading 

 to sumps which open upon the slipway. At the back of the platform in a housing built against the 

 factory wall there are two whaling- winches which can be coupled together : a smaller winch, for working 

 up the head, is fixed in one corner. 



The Sperm whales, brought by motor tow-boats from the boat stations at Capelo and Salao, are 

 secured to a buoy lying just off the slipway. Two men in a small boat take a light ' fishing wire ' from a 

 whaling- winch to the whale, and in this way it is hauled into the slip (Plate XVI, Fig. 5). As soon as the 

 whale strands at the slip, there are whalemen and local fishermen standing thigh deep in the fouled water 

 to begin stripping blackskin for use as fishing bait. Their scrapers are bits of old iron, or a cutting spade, 

 or simply the clenched nails of bare hands. Meanwhile the platform men are sharpening their cutting 

 spades on a hand-cranked grindstone in preparation for flensing (which cutting in is best called in this 

 context). The multiple heaving-purchases, employing steel blocks and steel wire ropes, are rove; and 

 the moving or lower blocks are laboriously dragged down the slipway and fastened to a large fluke 

 chain around the tailstock. Double purchases may be used on a small whale, but quadruple purchases 

 are required for a large one. Two complete purchases are used for each whale, the standing or upper 

 blocks being stopped to robust concrete heaving-posts bedded in front of the winch housing: the fall 

 of each purchase is taken to either whaling- winch and the two winches coupled for heaving up. 



With this tackle the whale is slowly got upon the platform, and at once cutting begins by removing 

 the head at the condyles with a heavy spade, assisted by a wire from the smaller winch. Already this 

 differs from Norwegian practice, which is first to flense all the blubber from head and body before 

 decapitating. The head is dragged to the far corner of the platform, where the whaleboatmen are 

 waiting to flense it and remove the spermaceti organ. 



If the whale is a large one, then work proceeds at once on the trunk of the animal. If there are 

 several whales, and these of small or moderate size, then the trunk of the first is heaved to one side, 

 and room made for heaving up the second which is decapitated and similarly dragged to one side. 

 In this way three whales may be worked up together. 



Flensing the blubber from the trunk starts with the removal of the post-anal ventral hump (which 

 is all blubber) as a thick strip chopped out with spades from behind the anus to the tailstock. Mean- 

 while, with the whale lying on its side so that back and belly are respectively left and right, the main 



