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Navigating the British Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century: What the Logbooks Tell Us
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 May 2024
Abstract
Crossing the North Atlantic was one of the world's most important oceanic voyages by the eighteenth century. By then, ships built and owned in the British North American colonies and, late in the period, the United States were crossing this dangerous and often-fickle ocean in large numbers. The surviving logbooks of such vessels can serve as unique source material for understanding the Atlantic experience for scholars prepared to interpret and exploit them. Recording the Atlantic passages of the small schooner Sultana, the snow George, and the brig Reward in the Global Sea Routes (GSR) database creates a record for future researchers with a broad array of interests, but only after the obstacles to interpretation are overcome, to the extent possible. I will discuss what those obstacles are, laying out the information to be found in these logs, how it is entered and why, and what it has to tell us about the Atlantic and those who used it at the time. I will make the case that what is contained in these sources justifies the acquisition of the technical and historical expertise necessary to use them.
Note: the snow rig was popular among mid-size ocean-going Atlantic merchant ships by the mid-eighteenth century. It is similar to the two-masted brig, as opposed to the three-masted ship, but it has a small “try-mast” just behind the main mast (the after mast), on which the mizzen sail was hoisted.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Leiden Institute for History
References
1 The originals of the logbooks we will examine in this article are located in the National Archives of the United Kingdom [hereafter TNA]: ADM 51/43, The Log Book of Lieut. John Inglis, Commander, SULTANA, 18 Jul. 1768 to 7 Dec. 1772 (copy, located in the private collection of the Sultana Education Foundation, Chestertown, Maryland); TNA ADM 52/1455, Logbook of David Bruce, Master of SULTANA, 19 Jul. 1768 to 7 Dec. 1772 (copy, located in the private collection of the Sultana Education Foundation, Chestertown, Maryland); Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Am. 6823, George (ship) logbook, 1805–1806 [also contains return passage of the brig Reward from Jamaica to New York].
2 Reid, Phillip, The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800: Continuity and Innovation in a Key Technology (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 175–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 On the quest for longitude, see Howse, Derek, Greenwich Time and the Longitude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 Modern yachtsmen call this “heaving to.”
5 An additional important source of error in historians’ estimates of passage times and speeds is introduced by the use of certificates of clearance and entry. Masters would obtain official permission to leave or enter a port sometimes days before or after they actually did so. See Riggs, David, “Transportation Efficiency in Eighteenth-Century Merchant Vessels,” International Journal of Maritime History 33:2 (May 2021), 425–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 If the logbook is part of a collection that also includes the ship's correspondence, those letters can provide great detail about the running of the ship's business, especially letters between masters and owners, highlighting the nature of that relationship, in which masters acted as the business managers for owners in destination ports. Their correspondence includes instructions from owners to masters, setting out the parameters within which the masters were free to act on their own judgement; and, from masters, justifying their decisions to their employers.
7 Tildesley, Jim, “I Am Determined to Live or Die on Board My Ship”: The Life of Admiral John Inglis: An American in the Georgian Navy (Kibworth Beauchamp: Matador Press, 2019), 138Google Scholar.
8 See for example Bruyns, Willem F. J. Mörzer, “Research in the History of Navigation: Its Role in Maritime History,” International Journal of Maritime History 21:2 (Dec. 2009), 261–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Text in brackets in these transcription excerpts are my own notations, inserted for clarity or to note an obvious error in the original. The excerpt is from page 66 in the original logbook.
10 The table may be accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_the_compass. Scroll down the page to “Naming of points on 128-point compass,” and click “[show]” to expand the table. Note that the table presents multiple alternatives for each row; these are explained above the table.
11 Tildesley, Life of Admiral John Inglis, 14.
12 Thanks to Nick Burningham.
13 Authorship cannot be determined from the log itself; it is unsigned, and the provenance of the logbook was not clear when it was acquired. However, vice-admiralty court records of the case resulting from the George's seizure and condemnation survive in the National Archives (TNA HCA 42/419/477, Manuscript prize appeal No 477; HCA 44/56 Assignation book, recording process and decrees in prize appeal sessions, 1807 Apr 7–June 13). These reveal that the supercargo was Samuel Guirey, nephew of the George's owner, John Towers of Philadelphia.
14 Peter Reaveley, “Navigation and Logbooks in the Age of Sail,” https://web.archive.org/web/20150217124507/http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/shipwrecks/logbooks_lesson/logbooks_lesson.htm, accessed 8 March 2024.
15 https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml#declination, accessed 11 April 2022.
16 Among other sources, these may be found in the American Practical Navigator, originally written by Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838), and updated and reissued ever since by the U.S. Government (Pub. No. 9, Volume II, Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic/Topographic Center, 1981).
17 Mörzer Bruyns, “Research.”
18 TNA ADM 36/7269, Royal Navy Ships’ Musters (Series I) Ship SULTANA Type Schooner, 1768 Jul–1770 Dec; TNA ADM 36/7270, Royal Navy Ships’ Musters (Series I) Ship SULTANA Type Schooner, 1771 Jan–1772 Dec.
19 United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Miscellaneous Papers Volume 26 Item 29, Individual pages for: HMS Sultana, 1768–1770; Miscellaneous Papers Volume 26 Item 30, Individual pages for: HMS Sultana, 1769–1772.