This page is referenced by:

• 1 2022-06-01T20:46:14+00:00 Logbook of the 1887 voyage 13 plain 2023-02-06T21:33:49+00:00 A logbook outlined each day's activities and served as the official record of the events of the voyage. The term "logbook" is taken from the practice of determining a vessels speed by throwing a board attached to a rope over the rail and measuring how much rope spooled out during a specified time.
  
  Logbooks were essential for the day-to-day procedures of navigation and record-keeping, but they also had a purpose after the conclusion of a voyage. The official logbook would be valuable to ship owners and captains as they identified profitable whaling grounds worth a return visit on later voyages. Matthew Fontaine Maury, an American naval officer, extracted information from logbooks like these and in 1851 created a map of locations in which whales had been spotted and taken*.
  
  The logbook of the Eunice H. Adams' 1887 voyage allows us to track its course across the Atlantic, gives us a sense of the crew's struggle as the daily entries recount their efforts to pump water from the leaking ship, and helps us assess the successes and failures of the voyage.