Açoriano Oriental
History of passenger ships in the Azores in a book

André Velho Cabral is preparing a book about the passenger and cruise ships that have called at the Azores from 1900 to the present day. The curiosities are many. Publication is scheduled for 2025

History of passenger ships in the Azores in a book

Autor: Rui Jorge Cabral

The Azores on the international routes of passenger and cruise ships. This is the subject of the book André Velho Cabral is preparing, which takes a year-by-year look at all the ships that have called at the Azores from 1900 to the present day, from large passenger ships, which mainly transported emigrants, to the spectacular cruise ships, which today bring tourists to the archipelago.

As the author told Açoriano Oriental, "I estimate that the book will be published in 2025". André Velho Cabral is the cruise manager at Portos dos Açores, but he also has a degree in History and has been passionate about passenger and cruise ships since he was a child, so it is at the intersection of these areas of interest that this book arises.

"This project was born out of the relationship between the work I have been doing at Portos dos Açores since 2010, to promote cruise tourism in the region, the fact that I have always  had a particular connection to these ships since I was a child, for family reasons, and also my degree in History," he explains.

the research begins on January 13, 1900, with the record of the first call of the 20th century in the Azores, made by the ship 'Spartan Prince', the first on the list. It was not difficult to gather photographs and data on the ships, their routes and the number of passengers calling at the Azores. However, contrary to what you might think, it was not regarding the first half of the 20th century that it was most difficult to find information about ship calls in the Azores, but above all regarding the 1970s and 1980s, precisely at the time when transatlantic passenger transportation disappeared, gradually giving way to tourist cruise trips.

In terms of ship movements, it was in the 1950s and 1960s that the greatest number of calls were made in the Azores, at the time of the 'peak' of Azorean emigration to North America.

Of the various curiosities discovered during his research, André Velho Cabral highlights  the many stops of the famous Italian 'twin' ships 'Saturnia' and 'Vulcania', of the Cosulich Line, during their transatlantic voyages: There were even a few occasions when "the two ships anchored at the same time in Ponta Delgada, generating an impressive movement in the city".

According to André Velho Cabral, "these ships passed through here so many times that they were part of our people’s imaginary and the dream of emigration" during the period between the First and Second World Wars.

On the other hand, in the 1980s, André Velho Cabral points out that a large number of ships from the former Soviet Union passed through the Azores on 'diplomatic' trips to Cuba and that, during the stopovers, "people were not allowed on board; also, the tax authorities imposed various restrictions and, as passengers did not leave the ships, there were doubts in public opinion, reflected in the newspapers, with articles involving young students who were supposedly spies and diplomats," he explains.

Another curiosity is the record of the passage through the Azores of the famous Dutch 'fruit ships', which loaded pineapples in the Azores, at the same time as transporting passengers between Holland and the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean.

"So the Azores have always been on passenger routes and this work seeks to record all this movement," explains André Velho Cabral, whose book aims to be "both a historical analysis and a basis for future work".

However, to date, none of these classic ships have been able to compete in terms of passenger numbers with modern cruise ships. The record number of passengers in the Azores belongs to the Quantum of the Seas, with 3,958 passengers on board, plus around 1,600 crew, during a stopover in 2015.

The great transformation of transatlantic maritime transport, concludes André Velho Cabral, took place after the first oil crisis - around 50 years ago -, which played an important role in the end of maritime passenger transport, with transportation by plane becoming hegemonic from that time until today. The big ships then focused on cruise tourism.

Until the 1970s, the Azores had dozens of ship calls on its transatlantic routes and, after the oil crisis and from the 1980s onwards, there was a sharp reduction, which was only reversed in the 21st century and, above all, in the last 15 years, with the opening of the Portas do Mar cruise terminal in Ponta Delgada, where it has already reached 200 annual calls.

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