Tuscarora (1875): links, questions, comments, coordination, ...

[pommystuart]

The main mast was condemned whilst we were (I think in Apia) we now have been in Hololulu for a week and a half with no further mention of the mast.
Looks like it's going to be a Mare Id job.

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

They are starting to come down heavy on the crew for being naughty.

Francis Daniels (CFC) having been brought aft the following sentance of a summary Court Martial, he having been found guilty of swimming ashore and leaving ship without permission was read to him-vig: Solitary confinement, in double irons, on bread and water for thirty days, a full ration every fifth day and lose one months pay as Capt of Forecastle amounting to Twenty-Six dollars and Fifty cents.

Just set sail back to the US and they have found a stow away. How unusual they are usually trying to get off the ship.
Still heading northwards the next day so I guess he is not going back from whence he came.

[Michael]

I can't remember the ship, but I had one guy trying to desert and who swam away from the ship twice. I can't remember how he escaped the third time, but he eventually did succeed.

[pommystuart]

That was another one of my ships.
I don't know why the crews don't like me.

[pommystuart]

3rd Aug
Placed Thos Francis (Sea) in double irons in charge of sentry (for safe keeping) for stabbing with a knife Edwrd McGinty (Sea) taken on board at Hololulu for passage to San Francisco.

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

13th Aug arrived back San Francisco.

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

No more NNE3/4E etc for a while.

Today "A hospital cot was lost overboard whilst being washed off". Well what did they expect?

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

New word.
Received on board eight (8) breakers of fresh water amounting to ninety (90) gallons.

Water breaker cask: A cask used to hold water, especially drinking water on ships

[ggordon]

I was trying to figure out how the word "breaker" could be used to describe a cask of water when all other uses of the word refer to destroying or interfering with something. I found a possible connection in Wictionary where one of the definitions says,

"A small cask of liquid kept permanently in a ship’s boat in case of shipwreck."

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breaker# ... %20Brecher.

So it looks like it was water kept in storage in case the ship broke. However, there is a difference in that the other meanings were derived from the Middle English "breker", whereas they are guessing that this meaning was derived from the Spanish word "barrica" or barrel. So maybe even if being kept in case of a shipwreck, its use here may have nothing to do with anything breaking.

[Randi]

The Sailor's Word-Book, by Admiral W. H. Smyth, 1867
BAREKA. A small barrel: spelled also barika (Sp. baréca). Hence the nautical name breaker for a small cask or keg.
BREAKERS. Small barrels for containing water or other liquids; they are also used in watering the ship as gang-casks. (See Bareka.)
GANG-CASKS. Small barrels used for bringing water on board in boats; somewhat larger than breakers, and usually containing 32 gallons.


A Naval Encyclopædia: Comprising a Dictionary of Nautical Words and Phrases ..., 1881
Breaker. A small water-cask


OWpedia
The biscuit breaker has fallen out of the boat. This is a small sealed barrel full of ship's biscuit, permanently stowed in the sea boat in case of emergency. There will also be at least one water breaker [dorbel]
[AND]
BREAKER - A small wooden barrel, primarily used for holding water supplies in boats. The day's rum ration for mixing into grog is kept in a special breaker, under a sentry's charge, until mixed into grog. Some years ago the synonym "Barricoe" was invariably pronounced "breaker." - http://www.hmsrichmond.org/dict_b.htm


http://www.hmsrichmond.org/dict_b.htm
BARRICOE A small water barrel carried in boats. The word comes from the Spanish "Barrica" - a cask.

[pommystuart]

Received on board Portfolio of North Pacific station and extra Portfolio (12) of China & Japan.

We left Mare Id and went to Kiribati direct route.

This is where we went next year
Kiribati
Fiji
Queensland
New South Wales
American Samoa
Guam
Hawaii
en route to California

[Michael]

[pommystuart]

Nov 19th 1875 Tuscarora
Noon location 21 54 02N, 149 09 28W
0355 hrs A meteor of extraordinary brilliance was observed, its course being from the zenith towards the East.

[pommystuart]

Looks like log keepers have just had a lesson in recording accurately. ( I havent worked out how to insert a table yet and fill with data from the WR data tab.)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorag ... 32-158.JPG

Previous page courses were
W by S and wsw

[Michael]

You can see the note about Square 78 and 77. Someone, much later, is extracting data from the log to use in updating the climatology of the oceans. They are using something like the Marsden Squares. You can see that the Navy is using a different set of squares. The ship is at Lat 21N and 155W, and it's moving from square 78 to square 77. The Marsden squares with hose numbers are in the Atlantic, but the ship is in the Pacific.

I think the red line through the Attached thermometer column is just for the convenience of the person extracting the data. I had a note in an earlier Tuscarora log, dated 22 January 1883. The notations were in blue pencil, not red. The person making the notes added things like "Data unreliable" in a few places. Also, they stopped collecting data when the ship got into parts of the North Pacific. I suspect they thought they had enough data.



Of course, we are simply carrying on this work, extracting data from the log books, and sending the data along to Gil Compo's team, who then put it into their and other's climate databases. This is a note about their latest model:

20CR uses an ensemble filter data assimilation method which directly estimates the most likely state of the global atmosphere for each three-hour period, and also estimates uncertainty in that analysis. The most recent version of this reanalysis, V3, provides 8-times daily estimates of global tropospheric variability across 75 km grids, spanning 1836 to 2015

If you look in the article about their latest model, you will see a note about Recreating the Great California Flood of 1862. Gil's team wanted data for the area of Southern California and the Baha Peninsula of Mexico for the period between Oct 1861 and March 1862. Randi found the logs of ships in that area, and I transcribed the data from them. Those old logs are not easy to use, they have two days data per image. Now our spreadsheets can handle those logs, although it took some work to get all the macros to cope with them. It was the need for these logs that prompted us to work on the spreadsheet so it could handle them.

These were the four ships that we found, and which were used in Gil's study.
Lancaster_1861-62_WX.tsv
Narragansett_1861-62_WX.tsv
Saranac_1861-62_WX.tsv
St_Marys_1861-62_WX.tsv

We also did a similar thing for the Great Yangtze River flood in 1931.

[Michael]

The easiest way to post data from the WR tab on your spreadsheet is to use the Code button. </> If you're wondering, my guy doesn't believe in recording Baro data.

Code: Select all

							1863-07-20				
Hour	Knots	Dec	Course	Dir	Force	WX	TT	TS	Baro		
  1	 	 	 	ene	2	b	80	 	 		1
  2	 	 	 	ene	2	b	80	 	 		2
  3	 	 	 	ene	2	b	80	 	 		3
  4	 	 	 	ene	2	b	80	 	 		4
  5	 	 	 	e	2	c	78	 	 		5
  6	 	 	 	e	2	c	78	 	 		6
  7	 	 	 	ese	2	q	78	 	 		7
  8	 	 	 	ese	2	q	82	 	 		8
  9	 	 	 	ese	1	c	82	 	 		9
 10	 	 	 	ese	2	c	82	 	 		10
 11	 	 	 	ese	2	c	84	 	 		11
 12	 	 	 	ese	2	c	84	 	 		12
 13	 	 	 	ese	2	b	 	 	 		1
 14	 	 	 	ese	2	b	 	 	 		2
 15	 	 	 	ese	2	b	 	 	 		3
 16	 	 	 	ese	2	b	 	 	 		4
 17	 	 	 	exs	2	b	84	 	 		5
 18	 	 	 	exs	1	b	84	 	 		6
 19	 	 	 	ese	1	b	82	 	 		7
 20	 	 	 	ese	1	b	80	 	 		8
 21	 	 	 	ese	1	b	79	 	 		9
 22	 	 	 	ese	1	b	79	 	 		10
 23	 	 	 	ese	1	b	79	 	 		11
 24	 	 	 	ese	1	b	79	 	 		12
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		

You can make a table like this, but it takes a lot of work. I wrote a script in unix to do it, but it's not transferable to your PC. If you quote this page, you can see how a table is built.

							1863-07-20
Hour	Knots	Dec	Course	Dir	Force	WX	TT	TS	Baro
1				ene	2	b	80				1
2				ene	2	b	80				2
3				ene	2	b	80				3
4				ene	2	b	80				4
5				e	2	c	78				5
6				e	2	c	78				6
7				ese	2	q	78				7
8				ese	2	q	82				8
9				ese	1	c	82				9
10				ese	2	c	82				10
11				ese	2	c	84				11
12				ese	2	c	84				12
13				ese	2	b					1
14				ese	2	b					2
15				ese	2	b					3
16				ese	2	b					4
17				exs	2	b	84				5
18				exs	1	b	84				6
19				ese	1	b	82				7
20				ese	1	b	80				8
21				ese	1	b	79				9
22				ese	1	b	79				10
23				ese	1	b	79				11
24				ese	1	b	79				12
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9