THE PRESENT SURVIVAL OF OPEN BOAT WHALING 347 



The search in the Azores for ambergris, a concretion arising in the hind gut of Sperm whales, is 

 as ancient as the recorded history of whaling on the Western Islands ground, for Chaves (1924a) says 

 that the State correspondence of 1768 (p. 287) mentioned ambergris. Today, as in past centuries, it is 

 the custom when cutting in or working up a whale to make a routine search for the substance with 

 a few thrusts of the spade into the mass of guts. Usually the search is confined to male whales since 

 most Azores whalemen hold to the belief, for long a tradition in Sperm whaling, that ambergris does 

 not occur in females. Ambergris retains today a market in perfumery, and, although the market 

 fluctuates a good deal, it is still possible for specimens of the right smell, colour and consistency to 

 fetch very high prices. The Estatistica das Pescas publishes the value of pieces found in the Azores: 

 the figures naturally vary a good deal, and the authorities would probably not claim that they are more 

 than approximate, but during the 1940's the published value of a kilogram of ambergris was around 

 1,000 escudos, that is, about £10 at the rate of exchange then prevailing, and this is a possible figure 

 for ambergris of good quality. It is a comparatively rare find, although Chaves (1924a) was sufficiently 

 convinced of the possible importance of ambergris to the Azores whale fishery that he suggested that 

 the normal faeces of Sperm whales should be analysed for the presence of ambreine, the characteristic 

 constituent of ambergris. 



According to the figures in the Estatistica das Pescas, a total of 1208-58 kg. of ambergris have been 

 found in the Azores between 1896 and 1949. When discovered the ambergris is in pieces ranging from 

 small ' rognons ' of two or three ounces to very rare instances of huge masses weighing several hundred 

 pounds. A mass found at San Miguel in 1944 is among the largest on record anywhere in the world. 

 According to Figueiredo (1946, p. 176) it weighed 322 kg.: the Estatistica das Pescas gives 422 kg. 

 but this is a total annual figure and could include 100 kg. from another whale or whales. In 1949 I was 

 present at two finds of ambergris, one of 19 kg. at Sao Vincent, San Miguel, on 27 June, and a much 

 smaller one at Porto Pirn, Fayal, on 12 July when a ' parcel ' of these rognons, weighing 2, 3 and 4 oz., 

 were recovered from one whale. The quality of a find is just as variable as its weight, and these finds 

 were soft, black specimens of poor quality, although they may improve by ageing after removal from 

 the whale. 



The art of working teeth and pan-bone into decorative and useful articles is preserved in the Azores, 

 particularly in Pico where scrimshaw is something of a cottage industry in the whaling settlements. 

 An art now perhaps 200 years old, scrimshaw arose from the circumstances of the American whale- 

 man's life, and the word means in its widest definition the handcraft employing Sperm teeth or 

 'ivory', pan-bone and Right whalebone, metal and South Sea warwood and coco-nut shells, beaten 

 silver coins and turtleshell and mother-of-pearl, and in fact any material incidental to the whaling 

 voyage which could be worked with jack-knife or file or turned on a simple lathe, to while away spells 

 of tedium during the years of cruising. Mostly, however, the whaleman worked with sperm ivory and 

 bone and whalebone, finding these at once unusual and of satisfactory texture: scrimshaw indeed is 

 limited to these materials in the earliest published mention of ' schrimshawing ' by Olmsted in 1841 

 (p. 149), and in the slightly later references to 'mux and skimshander ' by Cheever (1851,* p. 136) and 

 to ' skrimshander ' by Melville (1851, p. 282). In its proper sense as the spare-time occupation of 

 a whaling voyage, scrimshaw survives and flourishes today in the carved and turned Sperm whale 

 teeth made on Antarctic expeditions by modern whalemen, but the work of the shore whalemen of 

 the Azores better deserves the name, for they got their art direct from the Americans who started it. 



The teeth require no preparation beyond boiling to remove bits of adhering tissue, but the pan-bone 

 is chained for at least a year in some shallow part of the sea-bed where the bottom fauna scours it, and 



* The second edition (1 851) of Cheever's book has been consulted in preparing this report. The first edition (1850) also 

 mentioned 'skimshander'. 



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