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.In [7333], Frank has avoided the point, in my questioning of his evidence
about the standard of navigation of American whalers in the 19th century.

His conclusions (about that standard being high) come from his study of
thirty whaling logbooks. Such conclusions can be drawn only if we know that
this group covers a representative sample of whaling voyages. But if it
does so, how do we know that it does? Frank doesn't say.

In museums, there's a well-known tendency, a curatorial bias, to keep and
display only the best examples, of anything. Of the immense numbers of
American whaling voyages that took place, some will not have even kept an
account worthy of the name of log-book. Of those that did, many logs will
have gone into the bin after the voyage ended. Of those that survived into
the modern era, some will have been collected by museums and libraries.
Those collections may indeed be vast ones, considering how many American
vessels were whaling, over hundreds of years.

Frank himself wrote, in [7279] "Hundreds and hundreds of battered old
logbooks exist in museums." Indeed, my guess would be in the thousands,
rather than hundreds. Yet he presumes to claim- "I'm quite sure now, George,
that you simply don't realize how many logbooks have been preserved."

The more that have been collected in institutions, the more the point about
selectivity is reinforced. Somehow, all those logs have got further whittled
down to the 30 that Frank has read. Whittled down by whom, and on what
basis? Was that whole corpus available to Frank, for him to choose his 30 on
some sort of lucky-dip basis? Or were they selected, perhaps for digitising,
on some other basis, such as legibility, completeness, good organisation,
fame of vessel or captain?

Was any policy adopted of choosing those 30 to be in some way representative
of all whaling voyages? If not, then answers to the question being asked are
not to be found in those 30 selected logbooks, though they may be of great
value in providing answers to many other questions.

Frank's response has been-
"Ahh... but of course it is impossible to KNOW such a thing with absolute
certainty, and so effectively you're just making an excuse for speculation
AS IF no evidence is available."

On the contrary, I've argued for keeping an open mind, and for weighing any
evidence either way in the light of its shortcomings.

He added "When I said we need to "bear in mind" these potential biases, I
meant that we need to be on the alert for them. Of course, it would be
foolish to ignore mountains of evidence simply because we are paranoid about
preservation bias. It exists, and we can deal with it."

Well, how, then? If it's accepted that there is "potential preservation
bias", how has Frank assessed its extent, and how does he propose to "deal
with it", before drawing conclusions from the evidence? About that, we have
heard no word from him.

=================

But apart from arguments about relevance of the log-book evidence, the
question remains about the casualness of whaling navigation.

I had written- "Well, of course, there would be well-navigated vessels, and
casually-navigated vessels."

and Frank responded-

"How many whaling vessels were "casually navigated"? What evidence do you
have for that? "

Let me quote from what I wrote in [7218]
============================
 On the other hand, compare that with the experience of the "Sea-Serpent",
only 189 tons burthen, a pilot-schooner out of New York, bound for Lima
with cargo to run Cochran's British blockade there.

Aiming for the Horn, in the South Atlantic, in 1822, she fell in with
whalers Herald and Amazon, of Fair Haven, Mass. Here's what Sea-Serpents
captain said-

"The captain of the Herald came on board to ascertain his longitude; he
said that they had seen no land for the last two months, and had been too
busy to pay much attention to the course of the ship; that he knew nothing
of lunar observations, and had no chronometer; he was therefore desirous to
ascertain the present position of his ship. I had an excellent chronometer
on board, and as the lunar observation taken that day agreed with it, I
told him there was no doubt I could give him the exact latitude and
longitude"

So there we have an unpretentious American vessel carrying the tools for
modern navigation, and putting them to good use, and two other American
vessels wandering the seas in sublime ignorance of their longitude. Truly
it was a period of transition.

The author was George Coggeshall, "Journeys to various parts of the world",
reprint of 3rd ed., 1858. His book is a good clear account of 36 voyages,
selected from his 80 made over 58 years.
===================================

That's not much more than a one-off anecdote, but it chimes in with similar
accounts I've read of ocean encounters with whaling vessels, for which I can
no longer quote chapter and verse. Those whalers seem to have been mainly
American, but that might reflect no more than the great preponderance and
wide range of American vessels in that trade.

As for 19th century American backwardness in navigation generally, I can
adduce once again, from [7201] the account by Samuel Eliot Morrison, in
"The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860"
(1921), who noted that even in the early nineteenth century, the position of
a ship was generally still determined by dead reckoning with the use of only
a compass, log line, and deep-sea lead. Among examples of Atlantic voyages
made by American vessels using these traditional methods, he reported that
an American vessel was seized at Christiansand, Norway, because she had
arrived in port without chart or sextant. The ship was freed only after
other American shipmasters in the port protested that they frequently sailed
the width of the Atlantic without those aids, claiming that any comptent
seaman could do so."

Morison was a respected historian, with 15 volumes of "History of US
operations in world war 2" under his belt, so can't be considered as
anti-American. His words should be taken seriously.

What I've offered above is, indeed, imperfect evidence, and should be
considered on its merits, with an open mind. Exactly the way Frank's
pronouncements from the logs should be treated.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.


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