Whales

From time to time enormous cetaceans pass off the islands of this archipelago. They are commonly called whales, but they may be either true whales or their close relatives, the sperm whales. Although the passage of these mammals is not very rare, especially in summer, there is no whaling industry in these islands, nor any hunting of any other cetacean. Now and then half-rotten carcasses are washed ashore; the last on record ran aground some years ago at Ponta Delgada (‘slender point’), in the north-west of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’). These remains still included much of the spinal column, some ribs and part of the ventral and pectoral regions. The deep folds observed on the abdomen seemed to indicate a species of the rorqual group.

In May 1905 a young whale, perhaps still inexperienced, found itself trapped between a sandbank and the shore, near the great beach of Porto Santo and opposite Campo de Baixo (‘lower field’). The inhabitants of the locality easily captured the animal, whose blubber yielded dozens of gallons of oil.

The large vertebrae of these animals sometimes form part of the household furniture of poor people, who use them as benches or stools once the edges have been trimmed.

Floating on the surface of the sea, congealed by cooling, one occasionally finds the white, oily substance that fills the cranial cavity of sperm whales. This substance, known everywhere as spermaceti, is called by Madeiran fishermen by the curious expression gomito de baleia (‘whale vomit’), because they suppose it to be a product of the vomit of the great marine mammals.