346 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



facilitate extraction. The cooked bone is dried and ground into bonemeal. Oil from the blubber and 

 bone is settled and separated by gravity, and then stored in tanks and drums. There were no centri- 

 fugal machines for separating oil in the Azores in 1949, and I understand that a good deal of the 

 gravity-separated oil from the modern stations, and of the poorer, darker oil from the try-works 

 stations, is sent to Saccavan on the mainland for refining. 



At Porto Pirn the meat is not extracted, being dried and converted into meat meal without pre- 

 cooking. No mechanical hoggers are used : the meat is cut for the driers by a small gang with butchers' 

 knives, working at trestles just apart from the platform. After the great fillets have been divided into 

 manageable hunks, these are brought to the trestles and cut into small strips and again into 2^-in. cubes 

 ready for the meat meal plant. 



Sperm whale meat is edible, and I have found it as tender and as well-flavoured as properly pre- 

 pared meat from Whalebone whales, but when fresh it is very dark, the colour of burgundy in 

 reflected light, and many people find this dark colour repugnant. Aboard the old whaleships it was 

 frequently enjoyed pot-roasted or made into pies and meat-balls, but I learn from enquiry that nowa- 

 days people seldom eat it in the Azores. It is only in Japan that the meat of this whale is generally 

 eaten. 



The modern station in Flores is situated above a small cove rather less than a mile north of Santa 

 Cruz. The station is built upon a cliff, and, although its flensing platform and cooking plant are similar 

 to those at Porto Pirn, there is a remarkable feature in the great length (in recollection at least 100 yards, 

 and possibly much longer) of the stone slipway up whose steep incline the whales are drawn between 

 walls of masonry to the level courtyard of the platform (Plate XVI, Fig. 4). 



The factory at Cais do Pico is notable for its fine, wide concrete flensing platform sloping smoothly 

 to a brief slipway running out from the shore between two stone piers. At this station there is a steam 

 capstan besides the whaling-winch and head-winch. The cooking plant has four autoclaves for blubber 

 flanked by two larger ones for bone. There are four storage tanks for oil. At Cais do Pico in 1949 

 the meat was not used, being dumped at sea with the viscera, but the company had plans for 

 installing a meat meal plant. In 195 1 the separation of spermaceti and the extraction of liver-oil was 

 begun. 



The station at Sao Vincent, San Miguel, is the oldest of the modern stations, for it has been operating 

 since 1934. Like the last station, it is built close to the beach with only a short slipway. Instead of 

 a blubber-hoist there rises from the platform a broad wooden staircase, with two flights of stairs, giving 

 access to the tops of the autoclaves within the cooking plant. A procession of men and boys, two by 

 two, clamber up the stairs shouldering poles which suspend the blubber pieces and tubs of bone. The 

 plant has oil-fired boilers to supply its eight pressure cookers. The head oil is kept separate, and there 

 is a manually-operated screw press to squeeze out sperm oil from the solidified spermaceti. Meat at 

 this factory is usually extracted in the cookers before it is dried to make meat meal. The cooked meat 

 is stuffed into jute bags and subjected to a simple screw press, and afterwards removed from the bags, 

 minced, and conveyed to the drying plant. There is also apparatus at Sao Vincent for making blood 

 meal. The blubber staircase and the two manual presses are shown in Plate XVII. The station is 

 served by whaleboats sailing from Capellas nearby, and from Ponta Delgada on the south coast. 



Ambergris, scrimshaw, sperm leather and tendons 



Besides meat meal and bone meal produced only at modern stations, there are minor by-products 

 which are interesting in themselves although they receive varying attention from the different Azores 

 whaleries and are of scarcely any importance to the economic condition of the industry at the present 

 time. 



