Tuscarora (1878): links, questions, comments, coordination, ...

[Randi]

(Click on the image to open it in a new tab)

NARA URL	JPG Link	General area(s)
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/183361825	January February March April May June July	California Baja California Mexico
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169803785	July August September October November December	Mexico Baja California California Baja California Mexico

Muster Rolls of U.S.S. Tuscarora 1875-1876, 1878-1879

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On the weather page, please enter: date, locations, knots, fathoms, courses steered, and all the weather data in the columns outlined in red in the spreadsheet.
If the ship is not moving (e.g., at anchor), knots, fathoms, and courses steered do not need to be transcribed. In that case, the course is usually the ship's heading.

On the events page please enter: location information, sailing information, and any mentions of ice.
In general there is no need to include comments about the weather unless there is something unusual or extreme.
Comments about problems with or changes of the weather instruments are very rare but should be noted.
Aurorae, volcanic, and seismic activity should be reported in the forum.
The names of US Navy and Coast Guard ships met should be transcribed, but if they are seen on the following days they don't have to be transcribed again. You can include all ships mentioned in a single entry without a time or any additional data. This gives the science team a chance to compare weather readings.
Other events are optional.

One person can do both weather and events (Stream 1), but the system also allows one person to do the weather page (Stream 1) and a second person to do the events page (Stream 2).

Every page needs to have a date. The date is used to organize the pages.

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See Tuscarora: general for some general background and discussion.
See Tuscarora: examples for a quick introduction to transcribing or a refresher.

See Transcribing Guide to learn how to transcribe the data.
Post in Ask Questions Here or this topic if you have questions.

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[joke_slayer]

Going to start on this

[Michael]

[joke_slayer]

They have some very detailed information on their instruments on this page which is hopefully helpful for the science team

https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorag ... 35-003.JPG

[Michael]

Thanks, that's a great help!

[joke_slayer]

Got to mid April and they are engaged surveying the coast of Mexico going south from Acapulco.

Found some of their maps here:

https://collections.leventhalmap.org/se ... :0p09bk83m

https://collections.leventhalmap.org/se ... :7d27f368r

https://collections.leventhalmap.org/se ... :k069bz149


I wanted to see if I could find any more information so I searched the name of the Commander John W. Philip and found his wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woodward_Philip).

Which for this period only states

In 1877, he made a tour of the world in command of the Woodruff Scientific Expedition.

So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole as I didn't think he would have been able to do a scientific round the world expedition starting in 1877 and take command of the Tuscarora in January 1878.

I found this which said the expedition would start October 1st 1877 and proposes using the steamship City of Merida
https://archive.org/details/finalannoun ... 6/mode/2up

This article from September 1877 which gives the start date as October 1877, however it mentions the Steamship Ontario
https://www.alamy.com/the-woodruff-scie ... archtype=0


And this from 1879 with a lot of names missing, and the Commander listed as A.P. Cooke USN
https://trieste-publishing.com/uploads/ ... review.pdf

Eventually I managed to track down James O Woodruff:
http://www.forthillcemetery.net/Notable ... druff.html

Late in his short life, while recuperating in Florida, he developed his second grand plan. That was to establish a floating university that would travel around the world studying places and cultures. Written up in most of the major newspapers of the day it was known as the Woodruff Scientific Expedition. His first obstacle was to buy a ship for the expedition. In order to buy a foreign made vessel that the expedition could afford he went up against the American shipbuilding monopoly to get the laws changed. This accomplished he then was met with one financial obstacle after another, passing away before this dream could become a reality.

Moral of the story: don't trust Wikipedia

[Michael]

Good find with the maps.

[joke_slayer]

I found this interesting note:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorag ... 35-210.JPG

https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorag ... 35-211.JPG

[Michael]

Darn cutbacks, reducing the number of our logbooks! It is interesting to read about all the course changes, about how the forms and instructions don't take into account their situation, etc.

Thanks for posting that!

[joke_slayer]

Finished and uploaded

While surveying they regularly recorded the current in knots per hour (plus a direction or just as ebb and flood depending on where they were). I transcribed this as they were giving a number, but they didn't put the leading zero before the decimal point and I didn't realize this is what they were doing at first, so the first few measurements will be factor of 10 too big.

[Michael]

I'm just processing another ship. As soon as it's done, I'll start on this one!

[Michael]

The voyage for 1878 has been completed with, once again, brilliant work by the Joke_Slayer. You can see a plot of the voyage here and, for more detail, you can download the KML file and view it with Google Earth. There were a few people mentioned here.


These are the weather statistics for this voyage:

Weather Element	Records
DirT	8,525
Kts	8,530
Baro	8,520
Attd	8,518
Dry	8,520
Wet	8,328
Water	1,347
Weather	8,530
Clouds	7,942
Clear	8,517
Total	77,277

Tuscarora travelled a total of 8,452 miles.