Ship's log

“ I was endeavouring to discover what particular nautical technicality might justify this application of ship in the sense of raft or float, when I recollected that sailors call the little float by which the log-line is held stationary in the water, by the term log-ship; and, by a rather singular coincidence, the origin of this very word log-ship is made the subject of comment in a recent number of "NOTES AND QUERIES" (p. 254.) , by a West Indian correspondent, A. L., who thinks the term log-chip. ”

“ Perhaps it may be necessary to state that a Log is the official document in which the progress of the ship from hour to hour is recorded, with such official notes as the alteration in sail carried, expenditure of provisions and stores, etc. A Journal contains this information in a condensed form, with such observations as the officer keeping it may feel inclined to insert.
The ship's Log Book of the Endeavour is in the British Museum. Mr. R. M. Hudson of Sunderland possesses Cook's own log, not autograph however, presented by Cook to Sir Hugh Palliser, the ancestor of his wife. ”

“ The sailor dropped overboard, a boat unsuccessfully searched for him, and then the ship braced her mainyard round and sailed away. But extracts from log-books, I have taken notice, are like the little box which the fisherman in the “Arabian Nights” found{125} upon the sea-shore; when it was opened a wonderful creature shaped itself out, and its figure filled the sky. I particularly realized this when Mr. Bowling gave me a sketch of the yarn of which Captain Braddick’s log is the briefest hint. Why, what a world of adventure, of heroism, of peril grows up out of these marine entries! ”

“ Outside the harbour and clear of the defences Boyd put her on her southerly course, and the log was streamed. Not a log that tows astern like that of a surface ship, but a long cylindrical tube carrying vanes at its lower end, which is lowered through a hole in the bottom of the boat and packed to prevent leakage. The Destroyer shot ahead at her twenty knots (it was nothing to her, as she was one of the latest class, and capable of a good deal more) and began her zig-zag. ”

“ Thus, the fore-braces run to the top of the forecastle, the main-braces to the top of the ’midship-house, and the mizzen-braces to the poop. It is evident that they expect our main deck frequently to be filled with water. So evident is it that a laden ship when in big seas is like a log awash, that fore and aft, on both sides, along the deck, shoulder-high, life-lines have been rigged. Also, the two iron doors, on port and starboard, that open from the cabin directly upon the main deck, have been barricaded and caulked. ”

“ But in Kelly and Woodes Rogers' days the log chip, reel, line, and half minute glass were the mariner's sole means of finding his longitude, or distance, sailed east or west.
Steam and patent logs have much simplified such calculations, which required many corrections not only for leeway but for errors in the log line and glass; "Shortness of the knots in a line," says Kelly, "being on the safer side, that a ship be not ahead of her reckoning; it being better to look for land before we come at it than to be ashoar before we expect it." ”

“ Such information will be valuable in aiding her to find her friends.”
I thought well of that idea, and promised to do so; though I wondered how the mate knew I kept a log. I had taken notes of my adventures ever since I had been blown out to sea on my little sloop, the Wavecrest; but at this time I did not know what an aid to memory a log—or [159] diary—would be. By the way, a seaman never calls it “logbook;” the daybook of a ship at sea is merely a “log.” One of the most popular magazines published has a correspondence department called “The Logbook,” and that makes the sailor smile! ”

“ The log-line was one hundred and fifty fathoms in length, and was wound on a reel, which turned very easily, so that the resistance of the chip to the water would unwind it. The log-line is divided into certain spaces called knots, the length of each of which is the same fractional part of a mile that a half minute is of an hour. If there be sixty-one hundred and twenty feet in a nautical mile, or the sixtieth part of a degree of a great circle, which is not far from accurate, and the ship be going ten knots an hour, she will run sixty-one thousand two hundred feet in an hour. ”

“ Meanwhile the ship is spinning along very nearly at the same rate as at first, though two-thirds of the canvas have been taken off her. These variations in speed are odd enough, and, at times, not easily accounted for. When the breeze first comes on, all sail set, and the water quite smooth, the ship can be steered on a straight course without any difficulty, and she really seems to fly. When the log is hove, it is discovered, we shall suppose, that she is going eleven knots. Well, the wind increases, and in come the studding-sails ”

“ It is the log-books of ships of our own navy from 1855 to 1877—the large accumulation of twenty-two years—that are now undergoing compilation at the Hydrographic Office for the series of charts described: since 1877, by an order of the Navy Department, the compilation is made by the navigator of each cruising ship. Being an officer of many years' experience at sea, and having direct and daily supervision of the log-book, there is great advantage in having the data arranged in the requisite form, on the spot and at the time of its occurrence, by such a competent person. ”

“ Dead reckoning means briefly the finding out of the speed of a ship through the water per hour by means of a contrivance called the reel log. When the speed is ascertained it is entered in the log book. Allowance is then made for what is called lee-way, if any lee-way exist, and the sum of the speed, together with the courses which may have been steered, enables the mariner to mark down upon his chart with more or less accuracy the points of latitude or longitude at which his ship has arrived. ”

“ LOADING. See the articles Cargo and Lading.
Shot-LOCKER. See Garland.
LOG, a machine used to measure the ship’s head-way, or the rate of her velocity as she advances through the sea. It is composed of a reel and line, to which is fixed a small piece of wood, forming the quadrant of a circle. The term log however is more particularly applied to the latter.
The log, fig. 14, plate V. is generally about a quarter of an inch thick, and five or six inches from the angular point a to the circumference b. ”

“ The chief differences which appear in the several “counterfeit presentments” of the historic ship are in the number of her masts and the height of her poop and her forecastle. A few make her a brig or “snow” of the oldest pattern, while others depict her as a full-rigged ship, sometimes having the auxiliary rig of a small “jigger” or “dandy-mast,” with square or lateen sail, on peak of stern, or on the bow sprit, or both, though usually her mizzenmast is set well aft upon the poop. ”

“ At length the man who holds the log throws it over into the water, and the ship, sailing onward all the time, leaves it there, floating edge upwards. The man who holds the reel lifts it up high, so that the line can run off easily as the ship moves on. ”

“ Got my log line strung up along 'tween decks and the whole blamed wash triced up in everybody's way. If I want to heave the log at 8 bells, overboard goes the wash, and don't care who likes it; I'm boss here. 8 bells. Didn't heave the log—Guess we're making four knots; wind fresh.
Course E. S. E. Shem at the wheel, Japheth on the lookout.
Wed., 9 days out. Ironing day; blowing a gale of wind; women are making hard work of it and getting seasick—Hove to at 8 bells this morning; lays easy; kicked Ham away from the wheel and steered his trick; afraid I can't make a sailor of him ”

“ The speed of vessels can be tolerably well calculated from the number of revolutions of the screw.
"Now," said the Captain, turning to the third officer, who was also on the bridge, "what was the last record of the chip log?"
"Twenty knots, sir."
"Common log is not much good at high speeds," commented the Captain.
The common log consists of a triangular wooden float, a line marked with knots at equal distances apart, and a reel. The float is thrown overboard, and the line allowed to run off the reel for a certain number of seconds. ”

“ When, at last, the log showed above the rail, if she started her antics, all hands near stood by for a run, for the log would suddenly slue inboard, and come across the deck like a gigantic battering ram. The whole process was a series of hairbreadth escapes. Down in the hold, where the stevedores toiled with tackles, rousing the logs about, there were many casualties; but these dagoes never seemed to care. For every hurt they had one remedy: [55] plenty of "caña," a fiery white spirit, fresh from the still. ”

“ When the logs reach the sea, they are shipped to various parts of the world where timber is scarce. Large quantities are imported into Great Britain from Canada and other parts of America.
A bold thing has occasionally been done. Instead of shipping the logs in vessels, enterprising and ingenious men built them into a solid ship, leaving a small space to serve as a cabin and a hold for provisions; then, erecting masts, they hoisted sail, and in this singular craft crossed the Atlantic. On arriving at port they broke up their raft-ship and sold it. ”

“ Along either bank, among the bushes, on sandbars, and in trees, hundreds and hundreds of logs had been stranded when the main drive passed. These logs the rear crew were engaged in restoring to the current.
And as a man had to be able to ride any kind of a log in any water; to propel that log by jumping on it, by rolling it squirrel fashion with the feet, by punting it as one would a canoe; to be skillful in pushing, prying, and poling other logs from the quarter deck of the same cranky craft ”

“ The grey mist drove by us like a rain. Every woollen filament of our garments, every hair of our heads and faces, was jewelled with a crystal globule. The shrouds were wet with moisture; it dripped from our rigging overhead; and on the underside of our booms drops of water took shape in long swaying lines, which were detached and flung to the deck in mimic showers at each surge of the schooner. I was aware of a pent, stifled feeling. As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one’s thoughts. ”

“ These are smooth slimy logs that a white man would find it difficult to sit on if they were on shore, and in this water they would turn with him only once—the log would go one way and the man another. But these fellows are in no fear of the rocks below; they easily guide their barks out of the rushing floods, through the whirlpools and eddies, into the slack shore-water in the rear of the boat, and stand up like men and demand backsheesh. These logs are popular ferry-boats in the Upper Nile ”

“ Their own row-boats are heavy, square at both ends, and clumsy to row, but as I have said, they are out in them in the spring before the floating ice is out of the river, rescuing logs and fragments of lumber from between the ice-cakes.
There is a good deal to the business of picking up logs. The price for returning 26 “strays” to the right owners is ten cents a log (the rate increasing as you go down stream) , and a good many can be towed at once by a small boat. The price per log rises to twenty-five cents, near the sea. ”

“ The coast Indians are splendid sailors, and their dugouts do not always come off second best in racing with the boats of white men. With a primitive yet ingeniously made [257] tool, like an adze, in the construction of which a blade is tied fast to a bent handle of bone, these natives laboriously pick out the heart of a great cedar log, and shape its outer sides into the form of a boat. When the log is properly hollowed, they fill it with water, and then drop in stones which they have heated in a fire. ”

“ The Draug's house, to which they now came, was built of boat's keels and large pieces of wreckage, in the interstices of which grew all sorts of sea-grass and slimy green stuff. Three monstrously heavy green posts, covered with shell-fish, formed the entrance, and the door consisted of planks which had sunk to the bottom and were full of clincher-nails. In the middle of it, like a knocker, was a heavy rusty iron mooring-ring, with the worn-away stump of a ship's hawser hanging to it. ”

“ There followed a banging in the cargo-space, the boatswain’s whistle began its shrill little calls, which would keep up all day, a donkey engine puffed, and a windlass rattled in the bowels of the ship; the big hook on the end of its rope swung down the hatchway, and presently a net-sling full of boxes was hoisted and deposited on the main deck. ”

“ After journeying across the plain, we came about mid-day to the seaboard, and there we spied, lying in a sheltered bay, a long galley with three masts, each dressed with a single cross-spar for carrying a leg-of-mutton sail, and on the shore a couple of ship's boats with a company of men waiting to transport our goods and us aboard. And here our hearts quaked a bit at the thought of trusting ourselves in the hands of these same murderous-looking pirates. ”

“ The very nature of log is, not only to float, but to remain sluggish or stationary in the water: and as it might not be convenient to provide a fresh log (or chip) for every occasion, there would be a clear advantage in tying a string to it, for the purpose of hauling it inboard again, to serve another turn. Moreover, I must remind A. L. that sailors do not say, "Heave the chip," but "Heave the log."
This same passage in the Comedy of Errors suggests another consideration; which is, that Shakspeare appears to have used league and mile synonymously. ”