News Release

ON EXHIBIT -- January 5 thru February 2009
Recent Acquisitions by PPL Special Collections: Nicholson Whaling Collection

Whaling Logbooks and Journals
There are over 15,000 known American offshore (or “pelagic”) whaling voyages from the 1700s to the 1920s (not including the modern factory ship voyages of the mid-20th century). Of those, there are logbook records extant (complete and partial) for approximately 5,000 voyages. Providence Public Library’s collection of over 800 volumes containing entries related to over 1,000 voyages, constitutes 20 percent of all known and extant American whaling logs and journals.

United States maritime law required the Mate, or first officer, to keep the logbook. American whalemen were rather casual about recording navigational data, especially compared to the English mariners. Although the logbook was considered to be a navigational record which provided the only acceptable evidence in the event of a court case, American whalemen used it primarily as a means of recording the taking of whales, weather conditions, damage to the vessel, the handling of the vessel and the behavior of the crew.

As stated, a logbook is the official record of the voyage, usually kept by the Mate. A journal is any written record of the voyage (with daily or regular entries) kept by any member of the crew, supercargo, or anyone else on board. What no one knows is how many surviving logbooks and journals remain in private hands—gathering dust in attics or growing mold in cellars. Those which surface in the antiquarian trade have usually come from a family whose ancestor served on a whaler, or from a collector’s horde. As you will see from this exhibit, the logs and journals we have acquired in the past year have come from a spectrum of possible sources—private individuals, institutions, antiquarian dealers, and auction houses.