It was a sunny day on Santa Bárbara beach last July—warm sand, clear skies, churning waves—900 miles to the nearest continent. Fate (or rather a RISD summer architecture class) had landed me on this patch of volcanic sand on the north shore of São Miguel island, the largest of nine in the Azores group, which form an autonomous territory of Portugal in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Born from volcanic activity along the mid-Atlantic ridge, the islands are so far removed from continental Europe that they lie partially on the North American tectonic plate.

Barefoot, and leaving my lagging classmates behind, I shuffled through the warm sand up the beach, cutting a diagonal toward the ocean. As I neared the tide line, I saw what looked like dozens of bluish plastic bags littering the shore. As I walked closer, I realized I was wrong. While blue and bag-like they were, plastic they were not. These air-filled sacs were alive, albeit close to death. I was among a recently beached swarm of Portuguese man o’ war, a type of siphonophore, a jellyfish relative, that lives in oceans worldwide and is especially common in Portuguese waters. Propelled eastward by the warm water of the Azorean Current, these creatures, like me, had traveled 2,000 miles from North America to find themselves on this beach.

I sat down in the sand and began to draw a pair of them lying next to each other, their bright blue bodies glistening in the sunlight. 

The man o’ war takes its name from a type of fast-sailing ship first developed in Portugal in the early 15th century, although it predates ships (and humans) by millions of years. These ancient beings possess a prominent sail, an inflated protrusion atop their colorful balloon-like body, and an anchor, a lock of tentacles that can extend up to 30 feet. The Portuguese name for the creature, caravela, also refers to a similar ship, the caravel. Australians call it a bluebottle, an apt descriptor for how they look on first approach. But this isn’t the kind of bottle you pop open to read the message inside. Indeed, any overly forceful attempt to spill its secret out will make its message all to clear: DO NOT TOUCH. 

Luckily, I was aware of this painful truth and was able to warn my classmates before any one of them landed us a group trip to the hospital, or worse, a group debate over the merits of peeing on the sting, the favored Australian solution. (After reading more, my warnings might have been overblown: a man o’ war sting won’t kill you, but it won’t be pleasant. There were no signs on the beach cautioning naive beachgoers of this.)

Regardless, on admiring the man o’ war up close, I was overcome with an overwhelming desire to pop the balloon much as one feels a compulsion to pop bubble wrap. Despite the excruciatingly painful sting that the creature can inflict—alive or dead—it is indeed a popular trend, unsurprisingly in Australia and apparently in the Azores too, to pop the air sacs with a stick or other sharp object. I settled on prodding mine with a pencil, but I saw one local youth go around popping dozens like his mom had given him license to pop the balloons at the end of a party. Thus the mighty journey of these men o’ war came to a deflating end, stabbed to death by a juvenile human. 

My drawing was not coming along well. These two mariners who had traveled potentially thousands of miles around the North Atlantic, survived storms and thirty foot waves, a journey many oceangoing ships could not. Their entire lives they had been at the mercy of the sea. As they took their (metaphorical) dying breaths and contemplated their violent lives, they were being rendered as ugly dumplings by a 20-year old amateur artist trying to get his money’s worth for a summer class. 

More than 500 years ago, another two caravels reached the Azores after an arduous eastward journey at sea. These two vessels also navigated by the wind, but had a (somewhat) better influence over where they were going. On the night of February 17th, 1493, Columbus’s Niña and Pinta, fresh off their maiden voyage to the West Indies, and laden with the first ever tobacco leaves, pineapples and turkeys to reach Europe, as well as several captive Taíno, laid anchor on Santa Maria island, to the south of São Miguel. (Ironically, the Santa Maria, the third ship in the original fleet, had been abandoned on Hispañola.) After surviving a rough storm a few days prior, these hardened men of war were laying down their arms to follow through on a vow they had made during the throes of the roughest storm: to pray to the first Virgin Mary shrine they found upon reaching land. 

Fortunately for them, Santa Maria island had been settled some 60 years prior by the Portuguese, and had a small shrine available. Columbus sent half of his crew to pray while remaining on board the Niña with the other half. While in prayer, however, the former group was arrested and held hostage by João de Castanhiera, the island’s Portuguese captain, on suspicion of piracy. But Columbus, having the upper hand by being anchored with the other half of his (armed) men, evaded capture himself and eventually persuaded Castanheira to release the imprisoned crew. 

I assume Castanhiera did so reluctantly after realizing it was probably not worth it for him to continue to hold the men hostage. His wife would be making caldo, and his eighteen kids would all need to be tucked in… 

In letting these men of war sail free, Castanheira avoided the sting himself and didn’t feel the need to warn anyone about it. Unbeknownst to him, the sting he let slip carried not only enough toxin to poison a man, but an entire hemisphere. The two ships reached Spain and wowed Ferdinand and Isabella with their treasures. After that, well, the rest is history, and the detour is often a footnote in accounts of the first voyage to the Indies. But Columbus’s ambitions, and world history as we know it, could have been stopped in their tracks in the Azores had things gone differently.

As Atlantic travel boomed, the islands secured their place as a critical waystation for ships, and later planes, and as a mid-ocean outpost for the Portuguese colonial empire into the 1970s. As recently as the 50’s, my grandma told me she stopped overnight in the Azores to refuel on a transatlantic flight to London.

Man o’ war are unique in nature for displaying “handedness,” meaning that their biological sails are oriented in one of two opposite directions in relation to their central axis. The ratio between “left handed” and “right handed” individuals seems to be about 1:1. When the wind blows a group of them, due to this asymmetrical alignment, the two groups will be blown at different angles. This peculiarity is believed to be an evolutionary adaptation to prevent mass strandings. Much as Columbus survived his Azorean foray by keeping half his men aboard the Niña, man o’ war survive by splitting the bet on their collective fate in opposite directions. In this way, they outsmart the sea and its unpredictability. 

It must’ve been the unlucky half that I encountered and took to drawing on Santa Bárbara beach. The other half was presumably happily bobbing along at sea, riding the waves and ensnaring fish with no cares in the world (until a hungry sea turtle comes over to say bom dia).

We left São Miguel after three weeks, and upon returning to Rhode Island, I thought that was that—what happens in Azores stays in Azores. But I came to find that what happens in the Azores frequently finds its way to New England, defying the current and moving westward.

Despite lying on the same latitude, southern New England the the Azores could not be more different geographically—the islands are a lush semi tropical paradise, with dense forests, bright blue caldera lakes, and rolling hills of green grass with grazing Holsteins under a rainbow, like something you would see on the side of a butter carton. Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, well, fall a bit short of that to say the least. But despite its scenic inferiority, this pocket of Yankeeland is home to a significant number of Azoreans and a much greater number of their American-born descendents who still proudly claim heritage. The Azorean flag, blue and white with nine stars and a golden gosshawk, the islands’ namesake (açor in Portuguese, açores plural), is not an uncommon sight in immigrant communities like East Providence, New Bedford, and Fall River.

It was whaling that initially brought the first batch of Azoreans to New England. In the 1800s, the vast open water channel between the two lands was a heavily trafficked whaling route, hauling thousands of carcasses back in both directions back for processing. As whaling declined in the 1870s, Azoreans continued to seek work in those booming industrial towns, where they were joined by Madeirans, Cape Verdeans, and mainlanders, rounding out the Portuguese-American community that thrives in the region today. 

In 1957, sustained volcanic eruptions on the picturesque island of Faial sent a new group of Azorean emigrants fleeing due westward, where they slammed into the Dunkin-infested and crunchy-snow street of deindustrializing New England, but were welcomed into a thriving Azorean community, where they established businesses, organization and legacies that remain active today.

I was unaware of a lot of this history as I made the counter journey from Rhode Island to São Miguel. I’m not Azorean, and while I fancy myself a lusophile, I have no familial connection to the archipelago. But those who do are a significant number of the folks returning to visit. Almost all of the locals I met on the island had some relation living in New England, and likewise, many people I met in Providence are still connected to their Azorean relatives. The eastbound route—the one taken by the man o’ war—is now an active part of the back-and-forth human exchange between the islands, America, and mainland Portugal. To travel it and learn its history was a fascinating and unforgettable experience. But the real joy was getting to carry it all back home, something not everyone, including my blue inflatable friends, gets the chance to do. Suck on that, man o’ wimps!