Old Weather and more

[Maikel]

Old Weather and more

In my humble opinion, the name Old Weather is a bit of a misnomer: the project covers much more than its name would suggest.
In The Origin and Evolution of Old Weather, Michael has described thoroughly the collection of weather observations, ice conditions and positions, but right from the start the project has also been collecting data for naval history, genealogy, biology, natural phenomena and astronomical phenomena.

From the beginning Gordon Smith was involved in Old Weather to guide the historical side of the project.
Gordon was the founder of Naval-History.net, a website dedicated to preserving naval history and memoirs, making contemporary accounts more readily available.

The log-books contain a wealth of information for historians and genealogists alike.
Besides weather observations, Old Weather volunteers have transcribed events mentioned in the log-books.
Places and landmarks sighted and visited, ships met, coal or fuel consumption, crew names and visitors, and much more, are all meticulously noted in the log-books.

The transcribed events, edited into a more readable form by Naval-History.net volunteers, are published at Naval-History.net.
The 314 Royal Navy ships transcribed in phases I and II are available here: Royal Navy Log Books of the World War 1 Era – An Old Weather Citizen History Project.
The United States Navy and Coast Guard ships from phase III are available here: United States Ship Log Books of the 19th & 20th Centuries – An Old Weather Citizen History Project.

Unfortunately Gordon passed away in 2016, but his legacy in the form of Naval-History.net was important enough for The National Museum of the Royal Navy to adopt the website.
The Old Weather-related work is continued to this day by Caro and Maikel and, of course, by the dozens of Naval-History.net editors.
Updates are announced in this forum's Branch Office.

The ships' journeys can also be visualized in Journey Plotter [a program created by the writer of this post, Ed.], a Windows application for visualizing journeys of Royal Navy vessels of the World War 1-era, or Arctic voyages of United States vessels from the mid-19th century onwards.
For a given day, you can see a ship's position and read the log-book entries that describe activities on board.
The Journey Plotter website also has the pages Where Were They?, where you can watch or interact with hundreds of World War 1-era Royal Navy vessels as they move about the globe, and On This Day, where you can read a random log-book page for this day from the many Royal Navy and United States ships available.

Other sources of interest are natural phenomena, for example volcanic and seismic activity.
Previously undocumented volcanic eruptions mentioned in the log-books have already been added to the database of the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The log-books also contain mentions of flora and fauna spotted by the ships' crews.
This information is used by biologists to understand changes in nature over the centuries.

Also, mentions of astronomical phenomena, for example sightings of aurorae and sunspots, have proved to be important.
Sightings from the log-books have been used by Jules and Chris from the Solar StormWatch project, resulting in a published paper.
More information is available in Jules' blog: The USS Jeannette: Arctic explorer and Space Weather pioneer.

So, as you can see, the project is called Old Weather, but it is so much more.

[Michael]

That's a wonderful and important addition, Maikel! Thank you.

[Maikel]

Thank you very much.

[Hanibal94]

Great work, Maikel - you've done a really good job summarizing the non-weather parts of the project!
I'll definitely use this post next time I want to show someone else what it's all about

[AvastMH]

An excellent report on the non-climate elements of our great project. Thank you Maikel. Especially for all of those valuable links.
If I try to explain OldWeather to people it takes a fair bit of time because of its breadth. Wonderful

[Caro]

[Maikel]

Thank you all, much appreciated.