26 November
Historians and naval enthusiasts can now access the Royal Navy logs of ships on exploration online, as the collection of fascinating records is launched on our DocumentsOnline service.
There are 164 volumes of logbooks of the Royal Navy's voyages of scientific discovery, from series ADM 55, now available to search and download.
The Pacific, the Arctic, Australia and beyond
Mostly kept by naval captains, masters, lieutenants and masters' mates, the volumes offer a first-hand account of the day-to-day activities of the exploration party, giving a picture of life aboard ship. The information in the logs and journals was used by the Hydrographic Office to produce charts and other data.
Many famous officers kept logs held in this collection, including James Cook, William Bligh and Matthew Flinders. Covering numerous areas across the globe, the records were made between 1757 and 1861, except those of the 'Morning', which were made in 1904.
Climate change research
The logs also include scientific information gathered during a voyage and detailed daily accounts of the weather they encountered. The meteorological observations in these logbooks have become a very valuable source of climatic information for scientists today and have therefore been digitised as part of the UK Colonial Registers and Royal Navy Logbooks (CORRAL) project, funded by the Joint Information System Committee (JISC).
It costs £2.00 to download a log book or journal from DocumentsOnline, but you can download the index of ships within catalogue reference ADM 55 free of charge.
