BS: Old ships' logs and climate change

Subject: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 02:07 PM

"Understanding the pace of our changing climate depends, to a large extent, on our ability to understand and model the climates of the past and their rates of change."

The University of Sunderland is digitizing meterological records from some 300 ships' logs dating back to 1760. These daily observations come from all over the planet's oceans. These old logs are in libraries, archives and museums around the world.
When the records are analyzed, they will be added to primary climate databases for further research.

One wonders what other information is included in the ships' logs that is of interest.

Editorial, New York Times, October 9, 2009, "View From the Bridge."
Reproduced in the online edition; www.nytimes.com

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 02:30 PM

One wonders what other info...

My guess is that they will vary a lot with regard to content and style depending upon the type of ship and the personality of the recorder (Captain?) which in itself would make fascinating study.

Info about what was carried, daily lives and chores and entertainment and meals, experiences in foreign ports, superstitions.

Wow. I am getting an Ancient Mariner moment. Tingly.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 03:16 PM

See the benefit of Windoze?

The ancient mariner stoppeth one in three.

Windoze stoppeth everyone, quite frequently!

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 03:53 PM

huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: gnu
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 03:59 PM

WOW! That is great! What an amazing resource. A TRUE treasure!

Very exciting news!

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 05:19 PM

Not to mention punishment administered, sailors who died, sailors who jumped ship, sailors or other people on board who gave birth, mermaids and sea serpents sighted, all matter of interesting things.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 09 - 07:46 PM

Oh, no! Not more chanteys!

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 04:14 AM

I love shanteys.

Not only mythical phenomena but natural too. Like icebergs, monster waves, whirlpools, undersea volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and doldrums.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 08:24 AM

And then there are these "ships' logs":

Ship Logs

Ship logs for firewood – take them as you find them,
Broken ends of timber that are good for nothing more,
Lying in the breaker's yard, working days behind them;
You should know the feeling now you've settled down on shore!
Bought your little farm again, left the sea for good now?
Playing at forgetting it, pretending not to care?
Draw the curtains closer, man, and fetch a load of wood now,
Pile the hearth with ship logs and – light them if you dare!

Ship logs for firewood – listen how they chatter,
Whispering excitedly in many tongues of flame,
Gossip from the Seven Seas, things that really matter,
All the ships you ever loved calling you by name;
Plucking at the lashing that so pitilessly bind you,
Dragging at the anchors that you thought could hold their own,
Dressed in rainbow fashion, they have come ashore to find you;
P'r'aps they know it's bad for you to sit and brood alone.

Ship logs for firewood – louder still and brighter,
So the Roaring Forties to the south'ard of St. Paul
Called you in the eighties; you were younger then and lighter,
Raced the upper-yard men once and fairly beat them all;
Hark! Your sailing orders; there's the pennant up there flying
Ninety yards astern of you to track the homeward bound;
Sweethearts on the tow-rope, with a pull there's no denying,
Stamp and go together, draw you home to Plymouth Sound.

Ship logs for firewood – only fit for burning;
Even as they're dying see how cheerily they blaze;
Think of that a minute, and you're in the way of learning
Something that will see you through the dreariest of days!
Get another lorry-load and never have a doubt of them,
Then, with humble gratitude for all they have to give,
Ply the bellows lustily and get their secrets out of them;
Ship logs for firewood will teach you how to live!


From Punch Magazine, Volume 188, December 4, 1935 p. 625.

This philosophical poem was prefaced with the following quote from a shipbreaker's advirtisement:

"For real comfort nothing equals a good fire of old ship logs."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 05:15 PM

Above poem by Admiral Ronald Hopwood, C. B.; reprinted in his book, 1951, "The Laws of the Navy and other Poems." Thankfully on line, a copy of the book is not cheap.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Oct 09 - 08:48 PM

Q-

Thanks for the complete credit to Admiral Ronald Hopwood, C. B.. I didn't notice that I had neglected that. He's an interesting military poet and some of his poems are also avaliable as posted to oldpoetry.com.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Peace
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 01:04 AM

Whoever thought of this is a genius.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 02:54 PM

Virginia Tam mentioned natural phenomena. I remember that one of the accounts of Krakatoa's eruption came from a ship's log.

In "Songs of American Sailormen," Joanna Colcord wrote: ... actual source material to establish the historical record seems to have been destroyed wholesale, and wantonly destroyed. Shipping houses almost universally failed to preserve their papers.....
"Even the safe-keeping of log books was disregarded until Lieutenant Maury entered the field."
Colcord laments the destruction of ships' designs and other papers and drawings.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: gnu
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 04:31 PM

Many sad losses. But, the possibilities are exciting, to say the least.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: pdq
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 05:13 PM

Reading these ship's logs sounds like great secondhand adventure. Looking foreward to it.

However, trying to confuse anecdotal history with science is wrong.

The terms climatology and meteorology were probably not even used 300 years ago.

The only instrument of any importance here is the thermometer and it was quite primative by modern standards.

Global Warming is a rather hyperbolic term based on one degree of increase in average ambient air temperature (above land) since the great Irish Potato Famine, methinks that temperature data that is :

    from ocean-based stations

    made with primative equipment

should not be used to polute modern data, some of which comes from satellite-base sensors of amazing accuracy.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: gnu
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 05:37 PM

Oh... fuck it.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 05:51 PM

In addition to temperature, readings routinely taken were currents, cloud type, wind speed and direction and, of course, the position of the ship. Most of the logs are from the 19th c., thus not over about 200 years old.
The term 'meteorology' was first used in 1620.

Climatology was discussed scientifically by Maury (who, as noted above, called for preservation of ships' logs); he wrote a book on oceanic climatology, circulation and stability (1860). Temperature observations are recorded as early as the 1600s, perhaps earlier.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Oct 09 - 07:26 PM

Even the rings inside literal logs give a history of climate change.

Subject: RE: BS: Old ships' logs and climate change
From: bubblyrat
Date: 12 Oct 09 - 08:39 AM

I believe that there was a log-entry from some ship or other that read something like (I can't remember exactly);
" Course North- North- East;Visibility excellent;Sea State calm;Wind very light; Sank "
          Anybody know the real story ??