Welcome to Old Weather: Editing.
If historic ship voyages are your thing, this is the place for you.
Volunteers are invited to help us edit the transcribed logbooks of US Navy, Revenue Service/Coast Guard and Coast & Geodetic Survey ships from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.
Our aim is to make the content as accurate and as reader-friendly as possible.
The standard of handwriting (few logs are typed) ranges from good to mediocre to ... challenging.
The logbooks generally have a layout consisting of two pages per day.
The first page contains weather data (already transcribed by Old Weather volunteers); the second page contains 'Miscellaneous events of the day', sometimes called 'Remarks'.
Example:
The miscellaneous events page is where our interest lies.
Transcribing events has always been optional for Old Weather volunteers.
So, you could find that a page of densely packed text in the log has been reduced to a single transcribed entry, or none.
For editors, the minimum requirements for each day are the date and the ship's position at noon (we sometimes have to estimate!).
In addition to these basics, you may add as many of the day's events as you choose.
Some editors include everything; others choose significant items only.
For the benefit of researchers, including the names of people and ships mentioned is encouraged, as is including towns and cities, lighthouses and landmarks mentioned.
The latter also help to confirm your ship's position; sometimes they are the only indicators available.
You may add extra information through the use of footnotes or hyperlinks.
Hyperlinks are liable to change with time, however; often a footnote is safer.
Our publisher, Maikel, created the Journey Plotter program that we use to plot the ships' voyages.
Journey Plotter is fun and easy to use but is currently available only for Windows users.
If necessary, we will construct the plots for users of other operating systems.
Example:
More details are available here.
The edited logs are published on naval-history.net.
On the index page you will see a link to ROYAL NAVY LOG BOOKS OF THE WORLD WAR 1 ERA.
That part of our project is now complete; there are currently no Royal Navy logs available for editing.
However, there are many US logs available. Most have been split into manageable sections.
You can find the full list here: https://www.naval-history.net/OW-US/USAShipsIndex.htm
under 1. EDITED LOGS.
To get an idea of what is required, take a look at some of the edited US logs published so far:
https://www.naval-history.net/OW-US/Jea ... 9-1880.htm
https://www.naval-history.net/OW-US/Rod ... s-1881.htm
https://www.naval-history.net/OW-US/Rus ... 0-1891.htm
We have a set of guidelines to help you and you can ask as many questions as you like in the Editorial Office, a dedicated area of this forum (not visible to the public).
Our experienced editors are only too happy to help.
Find out how to join us by sending a Private Message to Caro or Maikel on this forum or email us at owteam@naval-history.net.