studentforever wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:31 pm
I wondered if I could help but although I have several logbooks of Jamestown in various stages of transcription that period is not included. I know only too well the problems of reading handwritten logs, just as you've got used to a writer they CHANGE HIM. Your ancestor sounds quite a character - they certainly liven up the transcription so I hope someone can help you.
Thanks for the thought anyway! I see we are on 'parallel courses' as are several other contributors here, looking through these haystacks for needles of historical interest. I keep seeing things that don't bear directly onto the story I'm after, but offer important context.
For example: the Captain of the Jamestown when E.C. Thatcher came aboard was William Truxton. So young was the country, and so small and nepotistic the Navy's officer class, that Truxton, a third-generation Naval officer, had served as a midshipman on a ship named after his grandfather, who in turn had been the original captain of USS Constellation (1798).
I am finding the Ossipee's logbook for 1868 relatively easy to read, and have found the exact entry when E.C. Thatcher reports on board (Aug 31, 1868). He was much needed, because the Ossipee seems to have been in something of a medical crisis. His predecessor as assistant surgeon had died at sea the previous month, as had two other officers, a midshipman and an asst paymaster, and several enlisted me as well. I'm now backtracking to see if there's any indication of disease coming on board or setting in during that cruise. The logbook is quite taciturn, of course, just 'departed this life' for when anyone dies, no indication of 'third death from the yellow fever' or whatever, though I imagine that may be the cause.
The Ossipee's logbook doesn't track the ship's sick list, but the Jamestown's does, so that's at least a bit more information. When E.C. Thatcher transferred to the Jamestown, that ship had been through another crisis in the medical department. During its previous cruise, the senior surgeon was relieved from duty, then reinstated, then relieved again, and finally removed from the ship and court-martialed for drunkenness on duty. His assistant, Dr Payne, had taken over his duties, which he continued until a full rated surgeon could take over.
I ran across something of circumstantial interest: When E.C. went west to join the Pacific squadron, I had assumed he went down the east coast to Panama, as a passenger on Navy or commercial ship, then across the isthmus, then caught another ship N to San Francisco and Mare Island. When he went back east 3 years later, the railroad route was complete, and there's a record of him checking into a Salt Lake City hotel during his journey. I doubt there's any surviving direct evidence of ECT making the initial trip, but I did see in the logbook a directive that a midshipman go east and report to Washington DC, and his route via Panama is explicitly spelled out. That's as good a confirmation as I will likely find.
Amazing how we (or at least I) can get so interested in knowing about something so trivial, that happened so very long ago...
