|
The American Consulate in the Azores
A Very Brief History
The ties between the
Azores and the United States go back to the beginning of our country. The Continental Congress maintained contact
with the islands to coordinate the travel of our emissaries seeking to gain
European support for our Revolution, and in 1777 Thomas Truxtun and the
Continental Navy sloop “Independence” took three British “prizes” off the
coast. President George Washington
appointed the first official U.S. Consul, John Street, in 1795, when Thomas
Jefferson was our Secretary of State. We've had representatives here ever since, and the U.S. Consulate in
Ponta Delgada is the oldest continuously operating U.S. Consulate in the
world. At first, the main American
Consulate was located on the island of Faial, and we had branch offices in
Ponta Delgada and, for a short time, a Consular Agent on the island of Flores
as well. In 1917 all Consulate
operations moved to Sao Miguel (St. Michael).
After John Street was
named Consul in Horta, Thomas Hickling was appointed Vice Consul in Ponta
Delgada, also in 1795. Thomas Hickling
was a young American businessman who moved to Sao Miguel in 1769, after a
falling out with his conservative father over the younger Hickling's active
support for the Revolution. Hickling
was an energetic entrepreneur and left mementos and stories that survive to
this day. One is a rock with his name
carved into it and the date "1770" that is situated near one of the
bubbling volcanic pools in the city of Furnas. He also left other tangible reminders: a summer palace he called
"Yankee Hall" in Furnas which became the genesis of the now
world-class formal gardens of the Terra Nostra Hotel and the first U.S.
Consulate building in Ponta Delgada, which is now the Hotel Sao Pedro, a school
for hoteliers. His principal residence,
in severe disrepair, can still be seen in the city of Livramento, a suburb of
Ponta Delgada.
Thanks to the efforts of
former Consul William F. Doty (Principal Officer 1924-1928), the Consulate has
a list of all Consuls and Vice Consuls who have served here since 1795. This is a small Consulate and always has
been; the list spans 200 years, but only three pages. Nonetheless, the Azores and Azorean-Americans have figured
prominently in American history, and stories and reports in Consulate files
provide intriguing glimpses into the contributions they and the American
diplomats posted here have made during great historical events.
During the 19th
Century, representing the United States became a tradition for the Dabney
family. Three generations of Dabneys
served the U.S. here, until the family departed in 1892. In 1807 President Thomas Jefferson appointed
John Bass Dabney American Consul on Faial Island. During the war of 1812, he kept track of British naval movements
through the archipelago. Toward the end
of that war, the Azores became a battleground for U.S. and British warships.
On September 26, 1814, an
American privateer, the “General Armstrong,” was in Horta harbor on Faial
Island to re-supply.Portugal was
neutral, and the “General Armstrong” was given permission to stay for 24 hours. Suddenly, three British man-of-wars arrived
at port, and Dabney sent his 21-year-old son to notify the “Armstrong’s”
Captain, Samuel Reid. The British set
upon the “General Armstrong,” but Reid and his men fought back tenaciously, inflicting
over 200 casualties. In the end, Reid
scuttled his ship to keep it from falling into British hands, but he caused so
much damage to the British squadron that it delayed its mission to link up with
the expeditionary force poised to attack New Orleans. Accordingly, the British were not able to land there until four
days after Andrew Jackson took possession of the city. Meanwhile, Consul Dabney used his offices to
help the surviving Armstrong crew get back home via a Portuguese merchant ship.
In 1826 Charles Dabney
took over as Consul upon the passing away of his father and continued to
protect American interests in the Azores for almost half a century. During his last years as Consul, he
diligently kept track of Confederate naval activity in Azorean waters. The Confederate raider Alabama sank 10
Yankee whaling ships around the Azores, and its captain vowed to target
Dabney's chandler enterprises because of his refusal to supply coal to
Confederate ships. However, the rebel
raider was not able to make good the threat before being sunk off the French
coast in 1864 by the USS Kearsage.
The Dabneys were renown
for their philanthropic work in the Azores, and Charles was called "Father
of the Poor" by the local community. The family was also key in developing the New England whaling industry:
six U.S. fishing vessels were recorded in 1827, peaking to several hundred
toward the end of the century. In fact,
the term "skeleton crew" has been linked to this era, wherein the
hardnosed Yankee skippers would leave home with barely enough crew to sail in
order to save on wages, picking up the bulk of the harpooners and crew in the
Azores (particularly from the islands of Corvo and Flores). Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby Dick
makes several references to the Azores (see in particular CH 27). It is no wonder, then, that the epicenter of
the U.S.-Azorean community to this day is centered in New England. Other groups of the Azorean-American
diaspora stretch to California, starting with the Gold Rush of the 1850's, and
to Hawaii, bringing construction and cattle raising know-how when those islands
were still an independent kingdom.
The Dabneys also remained
linked with American social and intellectual life of the times. The Longfellows (poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow's brother was a longtime tutor of the Dabney children), J.P. Morgan,
artist William Morris Hunt and Samuel Clemens (aka "Mark Twain") were
all guests at "Bagatelle," the whimsically named Dabney home in
Horta, which still stands to this day.
Shortly
after the U.S. entered World War I, the U.S. Navy set up what became known as
the Mid-Atlantic Naval Base in Ponta Delgada. A young Assistant Secretary of the Navy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt
traveled to Ponta Delgada to inspect the facility. The base eventually hosted a squadron of American destroyers
supported by submarines, a company of Marines, and some very early seaplanes to
defend against the U-boat menace that attacked allied shipping around Azorean
waters. U.S. military headquarters was
set up in the building that had been Thomas Hickling's home.
The
American presence in the Azores has also helped defend it on occasion. On the morning of July 4, 1917 a German
submarine surfaced outside Ponta Delgada's breakwater and began firing on the
city and our ships, killing a young girl in town. The American coal carrier "Orion" returned fire, and
the U-boat fled. The captain of the
Orion became a local hero, and they even named a brand of cigarettes for
him. After the war, on December 10,
1918, the ship that carried Woodrow Wilson to Europe for the peace conference
passed just beyond the city's seawall. The passing President was saluted by the
town's residents and, most likely, by the American Consul.
The Azores again became
hosts to American military forces during World War II when there was an urgent
need to move massive amounts of men and materiel across the Atlantic. First on the island of Santa Maria, and
later on Terceira, the U.S. established important air bases. During the Cold War, the base at Terceira
played a key role in logistical planning for possible hostilities in Europe, in
anti-submarine warfare operations, and in important actions in the Middle
East.
Woodrow Wilson, Teddy and
Franklin Roosevelt were not the only American presidents to visit the islands. President Nixon came to the Azores to speak
with French President Georges Pompidou and Portuguese PM Marcelo Caetano about
international monetary issues. More
recently, in March 2003, Portuguese Prime Minister Durrao Barroso hosted a
summit meeting on the Iraq crisis on Terceira Island. The meeting included American President George W. Bush, British
Prime Minister Tony Blaire and Spanish Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar. The summit was held
at the Portuguese facility known as Airbase 4; we call it Lajes Field. Former President Jimmy Carter has also been
a visitor to these islands during his peace missions to Africa.
Today the U.S. Consulate
continues to provide full consular services to the many American citizens on
all of the islands that make up the archipelago. The autonomous Azorean regional government has its own elected
president and legislature, and the Consulate in Ponta Delgada serves as the
U.S. Government's main point of contact with the regional government and
handles issues related to the U.S. presence at Lajes Field. Other essential missions include trade,
cultural exchanges and immigrant and non-immigrant visas. During the summer of 2003, after almost
forty years of operation in a waterfront building in downtown Ponta Delgada,
the Consulate moved to a new building. Even though we are in a new facility, pictures of former employees and
applications of former Azorean emigrants adorn office walls. We have not forgotten our past. We expect that the three-page list of
officers assigned to the Consulate in Ponta Delgada to continue to grow as the
Azores continue to play a role in world events. We will carry on the 200-year tradition of defending American
interests and citizens in these nine islands, in the center of the Atlantic, where
the American, European and African tectonic plates all come together.
Back to Top
|
