I described in my last entry how I
used shipboard logbooks and journals in writing the biography of Captain Samuel
Hill, Devil on the Deep Blue Sea. It is essential in looking at the maritime career
of an individual to look at every document that describes his or her life. Today, however, I’m pondering what sort of
shipboard sources I might use to add realistic detail to my current fictional project, a novel tentatively called
The Descent into Piracy of a Lady of
Quality.
Over the last thirty years I have
probably looked at around 500 manuscript logbooks or journals in support of
various projects, from understanding trade in ports on the Pacific coast and in
Polynesian Islands, to looking at weather patterns to understand climate
change.
There are several reasons why a
mariner keeps a chronological account of a voyage. It can serve as
a legal record in case of incident or accident, document a claim of new
territory, provide data that can be incorporated into nautical charts and
tables of winds and currents, and record information to guide subsequent
voyages in exploration, commerce, war, and the harvesting of marine
resources. A shipboard diary can also be
a place where physical and emotional hardships, and exultations of rapture are
scribbled secretly, intended to be shared with no one else.
The terms “logbook” and “journal”
are often used interchangeably, but a ship’s logbook is technically a legal
document, recording daily details of weather, wind direction, position,
soundings, and course traveled, and surrendered to the vessel’s owner at the
conclusion of the voyage. A journal is a
personal account, kept by any member of a ship’s company for his or her own
private motives. Both kinds of documents
can include descriptions of ports-of-call and of people encountered on a
voyage, incidents of trade, and accounts of disciplinary actions and other
aspects of shipboard life, as well as the standard nautical entries. A journal might also include private thoughts
and observations, poems, song texts, and scientific data. (My husband, Stuart Frank, wrote a doctoral
dissertation on the songs sung aboard American whaling vessels by examining song
texts written by sailors into their journals. There is a book that resulted
from that work: Jolly Sailors Bold:
Ballads & Songs of the American Sailor.)
I don’t recommend that anyone
starting to research a novel with scenes set on shipboard go to a manuscript
collection and begin poring through logs.
They are often hard to read, mostly tedious, and can be difficult to
understand without a pretty solid context.
Fortunately, many of the most useful and literate examples have been
published, some of which are the actual shipboard chronicle; others are
narratives put together later using the shipboard sources.
Because my new novel is set at the
end of the eighteenth century, I have the great advantage of being able to use
the narratives of James Cook’s three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, which have
detailed accounts of how the ships work, how islands are approached,
relationships with local people in dozens of ports, and observations of how
people live, what the landscape looks like, and what birds and animals are
encountered there. One must, of course,
always read accounts that are 250 years old with a critical eye toward the
implicit racial and cultural biases of the time, but such good sources are not
to be rejected on that count. We learn a
lot about the time we are exploring by understanding how relationships
worked.
The dramatic potential of a sea voyage
has been explored since ancient times, with Odysseus and Sinbad being only two
among many fictional captains whose exploits have been celebrated in folk
literature from the shores of several continents. It provides the author with a
perfect opportunity to test her hero (or increasingly her heroine) not only
against the known dangers of enemies and the elements, but against the unknown
world beyond, where fantastic and exotic adventures wait.
If you want to know more about
shipboard sources, I have written two encyclopedia articles on this topic, and
took some of this description from them: “Autobiographies, Journals and
Diaries,” in the Encyclopedia of Maritime
History (Oxford University Press, 2007), and “Logs and Journals” in the Encyclopedia of American Literature of the
Sea and Great Lakes (Greenwood Press, 2000).
Image caption: These are two pages from the logbook of Captain Joseph Ingraham, aboard the ship Hope of Boston, 1790-92. This manuscript is in the collection of the Library of Congress and you can view the whole thing online at http://www.wdl.org/en/item/436/view/1/1/. This is a particularly nice example! Don't expect that every log is this lovely to read or holds such delights.
No comments:
Post a Comment