Old Weather Forum

Each log writer is likely to have a peculiar writing style and spelling system. In the most exaggerated cases the spelling of one word may vary even in the entry for one day.
If you find oddities please do post them here to help other viewers working with this project.

Help with images
If you want to query/show some text please supply the page reference (the reference changes as you view the middle of a page), and an image of the text would also be helpful. Help for manipulating/posting images can be found in Guide to posting links and images. If you have any problems with imaging please ask for help below.

Remember - Always TYPE WHAT YOU SEE, just as they wrote it. If you are unsure of a word, you can post a question to this page and ask for help. If just one letter of a word is not readable you can insert a tilde mark ~ in place of a single letter.

The logkeeper has a peculiar leading lower case 't' that looks like a lower case 'r'. At the end and the middle of a word it is quite conventional:

July 2nd 1893



July 15th 1893

Our good logkeeper has a few different spellings for the Diomedes Islands (Diameads) and Faraway/Fairway/Farewell Rock.

For the Diomedes Islands, he spells it:
"the Diameas" (entry for August 16th)
"the Dieameas" and "Diemeas" (August 17th)

For Faraway/Fairway/Farewell Rock:
"Fariaway Rook" (August 16th)
"Fair away rook" (August 17th)

Both entries can be found on page 130 of the logbook:
https://archive.org/details/logbookofja ... 0/mode/1up

Great list Sandy Sorry - nearly got to leave this message yesterday - but the cat deleted it

We always check that the alternative spellings are in the Geographical Help Board. These two places come under Alaska so have a check in this list: Alaskan Place Names -- Reference
If they are not there we can post in 'Alaska - Discussions'

Hello friends,

I may need a new pair of eyes. Can anyone decipher what our lovely logkeeper has written in place of the longitudinal coordinates? Two images are below - the first in close-up view (rotated), the second in its original format (in the margins). It is for October 3, 1983 on page 143 (https://archive.org/details/logbookofja ... 3/mode/1up). We are on Herald Shoals ("Sholes") at this point.

This is the first time I've seen him put letters next to the longitude. My best guess is 'NC Ot' or 'NC Ct', but I do not know what those letters could mean. Or perhaps he has written, "No Ct" for "No Coordinate"? Many thanks!

Possibly No Ob or No Obs for no observation?
However, I don't have too much experience with whalers.

The handwriting isn't perfect, but he wrote "No Obs" for longitude as in "No Observation." In this case it means he didn't or wasn't able to record the longitude, but whalers will also use it at the end of an entry to mean they haven't recorded any coordinates at all, or they just had nothing to "report."

Sandy meet April (arboggs), April meet Sandy

April's a really good old pair of hands with the whalers!

Ah, thank you April!!! That is very useful to know. And hello, nice to meet you.
Thank you to everyone else as well!