Thanks, Jools, I'm so glad to read that you found your man! Last night I looked up the "Whaling Voyage" and "From San Francisco" listings on the Australia database for the relevant years, in hopes of finding my great-grandfather, but no luck. There aren't that many Portuguese, although I suspect from the names that a few of the "Americans" were in fact Portuguese sailing out of, say, New Bedford or San Francisco. A few are listed as being from "Western Islands" or even by specific Azorean island (usually the English rendering of the name, e.g., St. George, St. Michael, Fayal). There's no way to know whether sailors listed as being from "Portugal" were from the mainland or the islands.
Alas, the spellings in the database are, like all genealogical materials online (LOL!), erratic, to put it tactfully -- even "Towns" (as in the "Robert Towns") was misspelled or mis-transcribed once or twice in the records. Further, for all I know, some whaling ships containing Azorean sailors docked in ports other than Sydney. So many questions... Katharine. -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
