Old Weather Forum

Each log writer is likely to have a peculiar writing style and spelling system. In the most exaggerated cases the spelling of one word may vary even in the entry for one day.
If you find oddities please do post them here to help other viewers working with this project.

Help with images
If you want to query/show some text please supply the page reference (the reference changes as you view the middle of a page), and an image of the text would also be helpful. Help for manipulating/posting images can be found in Guide to posting links and images. If you have any problems with imaging please ask for help below.

Remember - Always TYPE WHAT YOU SEE, just as they wrote it. If you are unsure of a word, you can post a question to this page and ask for help. If just one letter of a word is not readable you can insert a tilde mark ~ in place of a single letter.

Mrs. Weeks' handwriting style is quick and fluid. This means that sometimes letters or words look incomplete because of the way they're written. For example, the lower case "a" in the middle of words (seen below in the name "Barker") can often look like an "o" because the end of the letter is lifted right into the next letter.



Or in this case it looks like the "a" is missing entirely because it has been formed into the "r"



A lot of these handwriting foibles are easy to interpret, but occasionally require extra attention.

In the image below, the "a" and the "r" are smushed together in the second word. By knowing that the phrase is most likely "Weather clear" you can use good judgement to decide what it says.

Punctuation can often be a fickle thing in the whaling logbooks. Some writers barely use it, some seem to use things like periods and commas with reckless abandon. Contractions, in particular, can be weird. The apostrophe might move or else might be ommited entirely. In the case of the Thrasher logs, it is common to see a contraction written as one word smushed together with a quotation mark hovering somewhere above such as in the below example:



Since it's impossible to type a word with a hovering quotation and no space, just write with no space or quote mark. So instead of "didn't" type the word as "didnt" to get as close to the original text as possible.

The letter 'x' and the upper case 'I' are shown below in the name Fox Islands

The word 'cabin' ...

Hey all! I was wondering if anyone could help out with an entry I'm having a hard time decoding (its from May first). I can make out "This noon saw [?] fish" but can't tell what kind of fish!
I'm also curious about the last sentence: "and PM [?] behind the [?]"
https://archive.org/details/logbookofth ... 9/mode/2up

No help from me, I'm afraid.
I'm not familiar with the language of the whaling logs.
However, I'm sure Joan (AvastMH) or arboggs will be able to help

It does look like cleric, but that seems to make sense only to people who play fantasy games. No help figuring out the PM entry.

Oh boy - this writing looks so neat and it's actually a real tough one

The fish is a devil fish. You'll find it in the Whaling terminology and background section of forum Library. It's another name for the Gray whale


I'll have to sleep on the next bit - everything I see makes no sense - yet. More tomorrow at an earlier hour. I'm sure it's not about ice, weather, or place so shouldn't be a problem meanwhile! April might have an idea. I dropped her a note to ask

Oh no! I looked at 'Capt. Naverine' in the log and thought 'That's an odd name because I've never heard of a Capt Naverine - just Cape Naverine'. And guess what? It's the place Cape Naverine. This is going to throw a right spanner into this one. Bless those log keepers. I'll check back with April and shiplover to see what they came up with. I know that these should be all independent pieces of work, but not getting this place in correctly is quite a loss.
All part of the fun of OWW

Hi, I looked at the page again and looked what I had transcribed and this is what I have:

Weather clear. sighted land this a.m. Capt. Navarine
steamed this a.m. tyed to the Ice. this noon saw
devil fish. Mr Foley shot a seal, and pm sport got
behind the door.

I'm pretty sure she's incorrectly writing "Capt. Navarine" when she means "Cape." That's just a regular kind of mistake that happens sometimes in the books, like when they spell a word two different ways in the same entry. If I remember correctly, "sport" is the name of Mrs. Weeks' cat.

Fantastic job with that scribble, April!

arboggs wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:07 pm If I remember correctly, "sport" is the name of Mrs. Weeks' cat.

I'll second Randi - brilliant job April!!

I've been looking at that second section and came to the conclusion that it must be a cat. Can't tell you how grateful I am that you'd worked that one out! So the end of May 1st is 'and poor sport got behind door'.

Wow, thank you all for your help! I never would have come up with Sport the cat on my own...
And Devil Fish--what a cool name! Between that and Michael's mention of clerics, now I want to create a D&D campaign set on board a whaling ship

Go ahead!
We already have Shipopoly
BTW would you be interested in joining the next round? It will be starting late July or early August.

Sure thing--looks really fun! In my family, we have a proud tradition of my brother beating us all soundly at monopoly every Thanksgiving, but maybe my luck will be better at sea.
I will go try and figure out the rule and such

Randi wrote: ↑Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:18 pm

And from me too!! Be great if you can join the next Shipopoly session. (Which reminds me - I need to get on with the new cards - eek!).

A DnD Campaign sounds intriguing