Cape Verde to New Bedford

Cape Verde to New Bedford. . For many Cape Verde Islanders, the New bedford wharf area was the first view of America. At the height of immegration between 1900 and 1921, more than a dozen packet boats ran between Cape Verde and New Bedford, the main port of entry. Packet boats carried freights and passengers on a regular schedule., After World War II, as air travel increased, Ernestina became one of only two vessels making the regular trip to Cape Verde. The schooner continued to do so - often without engine or radio - until 1965. She was the last sailing ship to bring immigrants across the Atlantic to the United States. Many of those Cape Verdeans - people of Portuguese and African descent - still live in the New Bedford area.", Because the Cape Verde Islands were on the trade winds route to Brazil, New Bedford whaling vessels often stopped there to pick up provisions and, sometimes, crew. Perhaps 500 to 1,000 Cape Verdeans reached southern New England on whale ships between 1820 and 1860., Upon climbing aboard the Ernestina... we found ourselves surrounded by beds, bureaus, boxes, mattresses, dressers, chairs, tables, chickens, and barking dogs, with people milling about.... No one could actually believe that dozens of people had embarked on this voyage, with all their worldly possession, in a ship past her prime having no radio, setting out to cross the Atlantic Ocean! , Frank Way Jr., of USS Arcadia, in Narragansett Bay, 1954