1830s ships logbook revisited

[Slocumotion]

Firstly, thanks to those who helped out with my previous queries - Darcy Lever's "The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor was a good call. Reprints of various old works on ship modelling have been very useful too.
Now the reading glasses are on again for another crack at it and having examined some microfilmed copies of the Hudson's Bay Company Churchill Factory daily journal, and the almost complete run of ship's logbooks they have in the archive in Manitoba - I have found a gap in those of the Schooner "Frances" which the book I found would cover, and she doing precisely similar work around the Bay as "my" vessel.
So, Frances she is - a fore-and-aft rigged Schooner. And the meaning of the phrase "brought the Main Topsail to the mast.." thus means to furl it, brail it or what-have-you (to put it away ).
There was also a doubt about a column in the log which had no heading and seemed rather mysterious but by comparison with other ships in HBC service (they were punctilious about record-keeping ashore and afloat) - it's Leeway, in points.
Log pages for all the vessels I've seen are laid out the same way, with columns headed "H" (hours, ie Time - 1 PM at the TOP of the day's page so the noon sight for Latitude is the last entry at the bottom of the Remarks column. When not at sea the log is kept in shore-style with just a daily entry describing the work being done by the crew. The last shore style entry will state that this days log contains only 12 hours. At the bottom of the first day at sea - "this days log contains 36 hours" So it's clear that the log page headed , say, 28th July, covers the period - noon on the 27th to noon on the 28th (as those ashore would know it).
Next Column - "K" (knots, no problem of interpretation there).
Next "F" This one is a problem -it comes before "Courses" (steered); "Wind" (Direction); "unheaded", (but now known to be Leeway) and "Remarks" - so it would seem to be navigationally as important as H, K and Courses , but what is it?
Well here are a few things it isn't -

Wind Speed ( in" Beaufort" - F = Force). Entries are all single digit and don't correspond in any way to comments about winds - Light Airs , Strong Gale etc , all pre- Beaufort terminology, and this is early in the 1830's, before Beaufort became common practise in the Merchant Service).

Fathoms ? No. Soundings are recorded in the remarks column, and I'm looking at an entry for September 10th, 6pm when "F" has been 4 since 3pm (and continues to be for the rest of the day) , while "Remarks " has - "Sounded and tacked in 25 Fathoms".

Feet (of water in the Pump well)? F can jump suddenly by 2 or 3 , or rise to 7, staying there for hours, without causing any action , or alarm.

Wave height (in feet). Doesn't seem to correlate with wind and weather remarks, though I could be more thorough in looking for correlations.

Compass variation is assessed at sunset, and noted in Remarks.

Temperature (Degrees Farenheit? - bit cold - always- even for Hudson's Bay. Unless it's water temp in degrees above freezing perhaps)

Atmospheric Pressure (change of .. - ) never any + or - recorded.

Visibility (F for Fog??) Any visibility issues are noted in Remarks.

Ice (condition) . As for visibility. And comparing to Ganymede - larger ship, generally larger F values and v much larger as she headed South from England on passage towards the Sandwich Islands.


That's me out of ideas.
For information - F continues to be noted, albeit by a series of ditto marks, throughout a night spent grappled to an ice floe.
I must be missing something pretty obvious, but what?
........................................................................................................................................................
Re-reading before posting and "water temp above freezing" leaps out as more of a possibility. Though why Ganymede would be bothered I don't know, unless it were that it was Company orders to collect meteorological data always and everywhere.

 

[ShinyShoe]

This appears in other logs such as this one:


And according to:
https://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/shipwrecks/logbooks_lesson/logbooks_lesson.htm

The “F” was for the depth of the water in “Fathoms” as measured by casting the lead-line. The Fathoms column was sometimes used in the open seas to indicate the number of fathoms in-between the knots run out on the log-line, to serve as an indication of fractions of a knot more accurate than “half a knot.”

 

[Slocumotion]

"" The “F” was for the depth of the water in “Fathoms” as measured by casting the lead-line. The Fathoms column was sometimes used in the open seas to indicate the number of fathoms in-between the knots run out on the log-line, to serve as an indication of fractions of a knot more accurate than “half a knot.” ""

Neither in this case - Depth is separately noted in "Remarks" and "F" can remain constant even when the ship is not moving, as in the instance quoted where F is dittoed for most of a page while the vessel remained grappled to the ice unable to make progress, and what a coincidence it would be for the whole number of knots to vary while the "remainder" stayed constant for hours, as in other instances.
But thanks for trying.

 

[Porthandbuoy]

Could ‘F’ refer to points free. Ie. How many points free you are sailing? Or could be if you weren’t tied up to an ice flow.
Just an idea.

 

[ShinyShoe]

I wasn't actually clear on the example I attached if they were 'dittos' or some form of dash! Ditto's seem a rather odd concept rather than writing a single digit IMHO! And sometimes a number is written where if they are dittos nothing changed! BUT even more noticeable the first line on the page can't be a ditto - surely...

My understand of how a log works is you have a triangle of wood attached to a length of line. The line has knots tied in it every 48feet (8 fathoms). The number of knots passed out in fixed 28(and a bit) seconds is the speed in knots and the F described above that I quoted is the number of fathoms extra. This would fit with your numbers - range 1 to 7. In the example I attached I think the speeds in knots are:

6, 6, 6, 6, 6.5*, 7, 6.5*, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7.5*, 7.5*, 8, 8.5*, 8, 8, etc

* 4 fathoms = half a knot... but practice back in 1830 was not to decimalise**, so they would presumably refer to 6 knots, 4 fathoms. It appears in my example they are only working to half a knot of precision. But if you look at the numbers expressed as decimals knots - they look quite plausible.

** They wouldn't refer to 6.5 inches as 6.5 inches rather as 6 1/2 inches...

I think your data may well be showing an attempt to give more precise speeds, down to 8ths of a knot.

As for values when the ship is not moving - they would presumably revert to being depths - does that just mean there was little tide effect at that location? Is there a remark against these entries that means there is conflicting data? Or are the depths in the remarks while underway - i.e. where the F column is in use for 8ths of a knot? My final thought would be - was the ice they were attached to moving (slowly)

Perhaps a picture of the data you have might help the detective work?

 

[Slocumotion]

Yes , I dismissed your suggestion of a "remainder" figure for the knots co!umn too readily, and wrongly. It does make good sense.. During the day or so spent grappled to the ice floe Frances made 8 miles of northward progress (drifting with it) as determined by two noon sights , the K and F columns being dittos throughout . I don,t see a problem with starting a page with dittos , especially not in a situation like that. I am still taking the two strokes to mean ditto , although the word ditto appears in "Remarks" mostly referring to weather, the narrow columns :- F, K, Courses and Leeway can all occasionally be blank or contain the two strokes, a tilde-like character or a longer horizontal scroll .Perhaps all 3 are dittos. I will need to take a closer look at the context. Posting one page wouldn't help.
Another thing I would like to check out is whether my initial impression that the F column entries were generally bigger for Ganymede (.
a much larger vessel) was some kind of perception bias. Interesting that "doing history" even from primarily numerical original material , one carries assumptions into the investigation and finds confirmation everywhere rather than looking for contradiction. I guess we all need a reminder that it's not just other people who do that the whole time.

 

[Kerenza]

In case no one has added up the first column in the photo, I think the knots add up to 174 while the miles say 178 - which you get if you add the half knots expressed as fathoms just about get you there.
How fascinating. (Genuinely)
On the subject of ditto marks, I seem to remember when writing say £1-00-6d or £1/00/6d older people would write £1..6d, where the two dots were more like ditto marks.
K