FOLLOWING LEADS

   Logbooks record important events in the management, operation, and navigation of a ship and are filled out daily.  The “day” goes from noon to noon which is important detail when using log books for research on such things as climate change. An entry will begin with a description of the weather and direction of the ship with the Latitude and Longitude of its location noted at the end of entries where there was a change in location. In addition, activity on board might also be included as the log lets the owners know the crew was working and that work might contain chasing, killing, and cutting a whale, ship maintenance, and anything out of the ordinary like the incidents of both stewards, Scott and Smith.

     Many log keepers had little education and, although attempting mightily to be correct in spelling, grammar, and other writing conventions, often had to spell words phonetically with varying degrees of success and, without punctuation, wrote in one long run-on sentence that often makes meaning difficult to determine, always subject to their personal writing habits and style. One log keeper wrote every syllable of every word as a single word so whether or not they had done something “again” or had made “a gain” can only be ascertained either by further information in this entry or another one.

     In the beginning, between the handwriting and the idiosyncratic writing style the transcribing or simple reading may be difficult, but, in a very short time, not only do you become accustomed to the style of the log keeper and the way he expresses himself, you become very familiar with it and, surprisingly, get to know the keeper of the log as a familiar person if they include more in the entries that just recorded weather, position, and whales killed.

     The Newport log recorded all ship activity on any given day, and it would appear the captain did regular daily rounds, describing tasks and progress along with the weather, while the captain of the Beluga in the same place at the same time merely recorded the daily weather because they were iced in on an Island 60 miles East of Barrow, Alaska, and weren’t going anywhere, and nothing else.

     Presently, I live just up the street from the home of a ship captain so enamored of the Bible, his entries were written as if each were a biblical event with long involved sentences punctuated by some lesson on life the captain saw in events.

     In a recent transcription, although the log keeper ended his entries with the standard line “and so ends this day”, he let you know how the day really went compared to the neutral in formation in the entry as he would add adjectives like “depressing”, “useless”, “frustrating”, and overtime while transcribing and knowing he would describe the day, I hoped the day simply ended and he could wrote the day had been a good one.

     My first transcription assignment was the whale ship Catalpa whose voyage was actually a cover for the successful rescue of Fenian prisoners from the prison in Freemantle, Australia. As the rescue was the purpose of the voyage and not making much from actually whaling, there was very little activity recorded along the way and noticeable was the lack of success at whaling and very little efforts expended to get any until the excitement of the rescue.

     The log was basically nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, a most exciting and movie-worthy rescue complete with shots across bows, perfect timing of all involved so that as the rescued were climbing up one side of the ship, the captain with them,  a British gunboat was on the other side demanding to talk to the captain who, upon gaining the deck, walked across and appeared at the bulwark as if the reason for his delayed appearance was simply that he had been in the loo, the ship left with the escapees heading back to New York, nothing, nothing, nothing.

     If by luck of the draw your choose a transcript and it is an informative one, or the one that looked good at first glance but turns out to be just a dry recording of business with little else, we are looking for us in that log and that means sticking with it, hoping the next choice is better. 

     I have eagerly opened the link to the log I was transcribing in some cases, but I have also eagerly volunteered to do a deadline project just to get away from another log. The purpose is to supply a readable version, especially for those who can’t read cursive. The log book might not be exciting reading, but may have someone hiding in it, so, even if the entries themselves are boring and mundane, the idea that I might come upon an entry that brings us further into the light gives it an edge.

     And when I begin a log, I will be making a commitment to the future to have the real history told and, to the past, to have them remembered.