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The following email message was sent to Ray Almeida by Bill Carter of New Zealand.
23 Jan 1997
Dear Raymond,
Thanks for your prompt response. Life is full of coincidences, Grinnell Street in New Bedford being only one.
I have had a very great interest in whaling in the South Pacific for many years (I am approaching 65 and retired), and in the Chatham Islands where my mother was born, and where I can claim a relationship with most of the island families. It has always been my fondest wish to visit New England and particularly the New Bedford Library and the Whaling Museum. Maybe one day. Meanwhile I will contact Paul Cyr as you suggest. I will also copy this to rleary@umassd.edu
My great-great-grandfather Frederick Hunt settled on Pitt Island in the Chatham group in 1843 and traded fresh and salted meat and fresh vegetables with the whalers for many years. He advertised his services in the Whaleman's List. He was the last man fined for smuggling in 1886 when he was fined 100 guineas, so not all his sales were for cash. He had shipped kegs of butter and tallow from Pitt Island to the port of Lyttelton in New Zealand and a keg of tallow being unloaded slipped from a sling and broke on the wharf spraying the nearby Custome officer with neat rum. The source of the rum was the last whaling ship on the Chathams ground, the Alaska commanded by its owner Captain Fisher, a long-time friend and associate of Hunt.
Hunt's ward, Isabella Grinnell, was the daughter of William Henry Grinnell, the mate of an American whaler, the Franklin, that was wrecked in April 1859 on the Flower Pot Rock at Pitt Island. I believe William Henry Grinnell was born at Tiverton, Rhode Island, in 1834. He died at the Chatham Islands in 1864, having married and produced a daughter and a son.
I have been trying for many years to establish his lineage and currently am working my way through the Grinnell Family Association datebase. To date I have drawn a blank, although there are several definite possbile links. My best guess is that his mother died between his birth in 1834 and his death in 1864 and his father remarried. As so often happens in families where there is a second marriage, the second family have little knowledge of the first, particularly if there are no step-siblings being reared with them.
Isabella Grinnell married an American Richard Thomas Paynter who was born in Michigan and whose mother remarried after his father's death a mortician named Harris in Denver, Colorado. Paynter went to California as a would-be goldminer and then later to New Zealand for gold but ended up on the Chathams working for Frederick Hunt.
The Net and the various home pages opens up an incredible opportunity for contacts and suggestions. I appreciate your interest is primarily Cape Verde involvement in whaling.You may find the following useful. As well as the Cape Verde seamen recruited by American whalers, there were two Portugese whaling ships recorded on the New Zealand coast, crewed as I have understood it by largely Cape Verde seamen chosen for their experience. Portugal had mounted these expeditions because of the dominance of American and French vesels in the trade. The Portugese Government provided a subsidy to develop the whaling trade and the vessels were fitted out in Lisbon.
The ships were the Adventeur and the Speculao. There was possibly a third ship but I have not traced its name or dates.
The Speculao was commanded by an Englishman Captain Robinson. and sailed from Lisbon in October or November 1839. It was unsuccessful on the New Zealand coast and in March 1840 commenced a cruise down into the sub-Antarctic to the Auckland Islands.
The Adventeur, which had sailed from Lisbon some 14 months earlier than the Speculao, had more success and by 23 May 1840 was reported as having 3500 barrels of oil on board. A number of Cape Verde seamen remained in New Zealand and joined shore whaling establishments. Emmanuel Goomes (possibly Gomes originally) was a shore whaler at Otago and later moved to Stewart Island at the south of New Zealand to settle at a place named Bravo. He had a relation Joseph, possibly a brother, who was a mariner. Another likely Cape Verdean name of Antoni changed to Antone and then to Anthony (possibly as a result of a mis-registration of a birth or marriage) and a daughter Johanna married Emmanuel Goomes. The names Susan and Esther also occur in this family as well as Peter. A son of Emmanuel and Johanna Goomes, Peter Antone Goomes, was a seaman and went to the Chatham Islands. Descendants of his son, also Peter Antone Goomes, still live on the Chathams and have extensively intermarried with other island families.
That's all for now. I will certainly put a small item on your home page and the Visitors' Log.
Bill and Kay Carter - "KIWIS DOWNUNDER"
kaybill@xtra.co.nz
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