Dear Diary

08/10/09 13:24 Filed in: Sailing, Maritime
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Today's spotlight is dedicated to sea captains everywhere. Consider the story below the next time you take your pen to your logbook. What you note just might play a crucial role hundreds of years from now--and not just in terms of the post-sail rum you like best.

Researchers from the United Kingdom are digitizing nearly 300 logbooks of Royal Navy captains from as far back as the 1760s. What is perhaps even more exciting (for those among you who are maritime aficionados) is the logbooks will be available on the National Archives Web site next year.

While these logbooks have long been of interest to naval history buffs and other historians, the data is now being used to track climate change:

Climatologist Dr Dennis Wheeler from the University of Sunderland said: "The observations from the logbooks on wind force and weather are astonishingly good and often better than modern logbooks."

Logbooks may yield climate bounty (BBC, Oct. 5, 2009)

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