Old Weather Forum

The reason for this project is that it is very hard to automatically sort the navigation and ice (and other specific items) from blocks of text. Having such pulled out and associated by line with date/time/position and page url offers the most effective means of turning text into actionable data. It also means that the data can be sorted in all kinds of ways without being separated by its unique identifiers.


If you would like to volunteer to work on this project, or if you wish to post messages on this forum, you will need to register.
See Registering for this forum and joining our projects

If you have a doubt about an entry you can always come back to this principle, and/or ask for help on your whaler's Shipyard page.
This main principle will also appear on every Shipyard page.

Additional information can typically include the following which are entered on the remarks worksheet.

• natural phenomena (volcanoes, kelp, sun spots, auroras)
• crew names
• the names of other ships seen or visited
• reports of ice from other ships
• whaling details
• other animals seen

Where to start then?
Please ensure that you read 1) and 2) before starting to transcribe
1) Transcribing: capturing the log details
2) Transcribing: managing your recording workbook
3) All about your whaler which will have its own place in the Shipyard. Use this link to Find your ship in the Shipyard and to see the full list of ships in this phase of OWWhaling.

Have fun while you work and please do enjoy the help that is always available here from the moderators, in fact from everyone. And do also feel welcome to join in some of the lighter hearted side of OldWeather in the forum.

You will also bump into the other projects covered by OldWeather. Those working on 'Ice Hunters' are transcribing the sea ice details recorded in the logs of Government ships. In addition, the sea ice plus the weather details are being collected from other Government ships.

Hello All,

Welcome everyone to OldWeatherWhaling (OWW), which is moving to this forum from its old life on Panoptes Talk, and away from the old transcription system on 'ScrIbe'.

The new system will continue to allow volunteers to work through the log books systematically so there will be the benefit of following the story of your whaler. Some plow up and down the planet between the Arctic and down to New Zealand with stops in Hawaii. There are some epic adventures with ice, though you will also see the opposite which is 'sailing around in a hole in the ice'. We'll go from the age of sail when a good living could be made, to the age of steam when the whaling industry was already in decline with falling whale numbers and the arrival of kerosene. Some logs are brief - written by men of few words. Some are more social, noting birthdays and holidays and missed loved ones at home. At the end of a journey you feel yourself sigh with the safety of the home port hoving into sight, but there's that itch to get back out again, to head off into the high arctic...