Log Pages for Transcribing - apply here!

[AvastMH]

Welcome on board the Hunter, a sailing whaler from San Francisco on voyage from 15th February 1893 to 8th Nov 1893. Mastered by A. Huntley, with the logbook kept by William F. Allen. Owner-agent: James McKenna

If you would like to work on a section of the log please

• leave a note in the next available reply section of this board below
• remember to say which section you would like to work on
• a link to the workbook, for your transcriptions, will be provided to you by personal message
• let us know if you would rather work in Excel, LibreCalc, or Google Sheets
• each section of the log must be transcribed by three different transcribers (Captain/Stream A, First Mate/Stream B, and Boatsteerer/Stream C)

Where to start once I have my log section and workbook?
Please ensure that you read these information pages before transcribing

1. Transcribing: capturing the log details, and information resources
2. Transcribing: managing your recording workbook

Dates are in the format YYYYMMDD. Links to log book pages are shown in blue

Journey section / Users	Date from	Date to	General Position	Comments
A Captain: shiplover First Mate: trittle Boatsteerer: arboggs	18930215	18930404	First stop is Honolulu, then swiftly back up to the Fox Islands at the west end of the Aleutian Islands	Mostly putting the ship together, and sorting out the Captain up after drinking spells. By the 31st March they make the 72 Pass and note 'everything covered in snow'
B Captain: shiplover First Mate: Boatsteerer: arboggs	18930405	18930730	In the Bering Sea	An awful lot of gamming, ships getting stuck in ice, virtually no whales
C Captain: shiplover First Mate: Boatsteerer: arboggs	18930731	18930923	Up to Herald Island	Desperate to find whales they follow the steam whalers as far north as possible
D Captain: shiplover First Mate: Boatsteerer: arboggs	18930924	18931107	A bit longer at Herald, then the run for home via Unimak Pass	The steam whalers have good stocks, but there's nothing left for the sail whalers so the Hunter is almost empty handed

Notes

• Civil Time
  This ship log is working on Civil time (i.e. the day starts and ends with midnight):
  May 10th 1893 '[...] 3.30 Am [...] at noon [...] tonight'
• Extreme weather/conditions comments
  If you find any comments covering extreme weather or extreme conditions, or extreme thoughts about the ship's situation please post them in the topic
  Extreme comments from logs. Weather, ice, seas

Thank you for your help

[AvastMH]

Posting here and in Extreme comments from logs. Weather, ice, seas

Friday the 13th October (Anyone superstitious? )
This day snowing, blowing heavy - gale from W. Bark laying too under lower main topsails Snow and ice everything is covered in and such a sea on Turned up the boats to night and by soundings we are now above twenty miles of shore some where near Cape Thompson blowing and snowing to night and under storm sails trying to get off shore

[trittle]

Hi,

I'm new to this forum, and I'm interested in helping transcribe. Is this a good place to start off? If so, I could work on the third transcription for this ship.

I prefer to work in Excel, and I would start with Section A.

[AvastMH]

Hi trittle,
This is certainly a good place to start, and your help is very welcome! I will sign you up as First Mate and send you a link to your Excel transcription workbook for Section A. When you've done a week or so you might want to get me to check through to make sure that everything is in the right place in that workbook.

We save all the work to a Google Drive folder. I will send you a link to your own folder via a private message (PM) here on the forum in an hour or two.

Feel absolutely welcome to ask as many questions as you like - sometimes there are special words used by them, or sometimes the text makes little sense unless you've got into the thread of what they are up to. Mostly it's all fine! I'm here to help whenever you need it

Thank you again!
Joan (AvastMH)

[Katfish]

Hi AvastMH (Joan),

Is this log still needing to be transcribed? The internet archive links all say the item is no longer available...
I would love to work on Section B (no whales - yay!) and prefer Excel.

Thanks,
Kate (Katfish)

[AvastMH]

Hi Kate! Sorry not to get back to you straight away!
She's all up for grabs so yes please do help. I'm just off to the Land of Nod so I'll set you up for tomorrow. Have a read through the log. I recall it's one of those 'end of an era' logs because whales were so fished out. You're relieved that the fishing is almost over, but you feel the world changing dramatically for the sailors. In the Bering anyway.

Thanks so much for your offer!

[arboggs]

Hi Kate! This logbook was re-uploaded in the archive so I am in the process of updating all of the links in this shipyard section. All of the links in the above table are now current and I'm about to update the links on the other pages. If something doesn't load please let me know!

-April

[Katfish]

Thanks April!

The logbook is there now and I've downloaded it as a pdf so I can start transcribing as soon as I get a workbook. It seems pretty legible so I'm happy to be first mate for Sections B, C and D. Are you able to send me the excel file/s?

Thanks,
Kate

[arboggs]

Sure, give me about 10 minutes and I'll get them uploaded to the drive for you

[arboggs]

Kate, I've uploaded the first mate spreadsheets as excel format for you. They can be found in the temporary workbook drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... uMH9nkN1gO

You want the "NBW1298" files

Let me know if you need anything else!

[AvastMH]

April - you are a total whizz - an angel! Thank you so much. I hadn't realized that the Archive had gone quite that mad!

Kate - It's great that April has given you the spreadsheet. There's lots of instructions around but my great hint is - use plenty of rows! When there's a new 'time' use a row! The times will sometimes be the old 'commences, middle, and latter parts. You might even get a proper time!

If you get a mention of another ship do pop it in 'Remarks' - sometimes they state a position when your own ship is in the Bering Sea, but who knows where?

Have a bash at a week's worth and then ask me, or even April, to check it for you so you know you're in the right direction.

Have fun Kate!
You're brilliant April!

[Katfish]

I think I'm OK with the logging thanks to AvastMH's awesome Transcribing post but do have questions. The first 3 days in Section B have co-ordinates:

Lat: 39 07 N, Lon: 179 33 W
Lat: 61 00 and something I can't decipher:



Then
Lat: 62 13, Lon: 181 30 where they see "Cape Naverine" (Mys Navarin (Russia) is 62 16 N, 179 5 E on Google maps).

For the 2nd day is it OK to write 61 00 N and leave the Lon. blank?
For the 3rd day can I enter the co-ords as 62 13 N, 178 30 E and if so should I say in the remarks that this is what I've done?
If they were around Lon. 180 they would have crossed the date line at 61 N. Does this mater and should it be noted?
I'm guessing I should write Cape Naverine for the Place Name. Should I also enter "Mys Navarin (Russia): 62 16 N, 179 5 E" in the remarks?
If I can't decipher something should I see if anyone else can and is this the place to do that?
And is this the right place for these questions or should I use PMs?

[arboggs]

On Thursday the 6th it looks like the reading is "Lat..61..00." with "D.R." written above it. Oftentimes a notation like "D.R." ("Dead Reckoning" which is a way to calculate position) or "By Compass" will be written on the Lat/Long. This is a note about how the direction was determined and is not relevant to our spreadsheets, so you can just ignore it. (Also sometimes with temperature they'll write some kind of abbreviation like "Therm" for "thermometer.") So for the 6th you'd just type "61 00" in the Latitude columns and leave Longitude blank because there is no recorded longitude.

You have to be really literal about this and only record what is written. Additionally, any misspellings need to be written as-is and not corrected.

On Friday the 7th the location is listed as "Lat..62..13.. Long..181..30.." so on the spreadsheet it should be written as "62 13" for latitude and "181 30" for longitude respectively. We don't do corrections and notations to spreadsheets. If the logkeeper themselves mentions crossing the dateline, that goes on the Remarks page. We do not add our own annotations to spreadsheets. Longitude and Latitude get written on the Primary spreadsheet page only. All weather information goes on the Weather page. And then on Remarks you write out the rest of the written entry as written with a semicolon to represent omitted information (like if an entry says "came up to ice at 12 PM then ran down" you would type "came up to ice; then ran down" on the row labeled "1200")

For example, on Wednesday April the 5th the two rows you would have are "This day" and "Latter part." Your Remarks for the first row would read:
"Bark steering NW. and ..NNW.. Employed in ships duty, doing odd Job.."

and your Remarks for the second row would read:

"not so much wind. and we Expect to see the ice now any minute Under. Topsails tonight. steering NNW."

If you can't decipher something, you have a couple of options. If it's hard to read, ask on the Handwriting Help page of this ship's forum. If you can read it, but don't know what is meant, then you can find a relevant topic here or here in the forums and see if someone has already answered or can help you out. When you start out you will probably find yourself looking up things like whaling and nautical terminology a lot until things get familiar. You can also private message one of us if you're feeling totally lost or aren't sure where to ask something. I'm usually available on weekdays.

[Katfish]

Oh, right, their remarks not mine! Thank you so much for all this info. I will finish the week and send you guys a link to my workbook for checking.

Thanks again, April!

[AvastMH]

April - you are a treasure! Katfish - thank you for checking so carefully