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William Martin's 1887 Whaling Voyage Main Menu William Martin Biography of William Martin The 1887 Voyage Whaling in the 19th Century Acknowledgments and Site Information Providence Public Library

Logbook of the 1887 voyage

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.

Logbook of the 1887 voyage

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