ADDITIONAL MARINE LOG BOOK DATA1911 to 1920

M elY' r;»: Ph oJ e So ) Se pC-em ber I qCl4- .

INTRODUCTION

1. The archives at Bracknell and Kew hold two types of maritimerecord for this period :

Ship's Meteorological Log Books - 2,191 Log Books atBracknell

Warship Deck Logs - 43,936 Deck Logs at Kew

2. Most of the Ship's Met Log Books are from merchant shipsselected by the Met Office to take weather observations.'Selected ships' were provided with accurate instruments and Met

Office Log Books.

3. The Meteorological Branch of the Royal Navy providing thespecialist weather recorders in warships, was not formed until1936. Weather observations from warships in this period wererecorded by the Navigating Officer or Officer of the Watch, inthe Deck Log. Specialised Meteorological Log Books were kept byone or two Royal Naval ships employed on hydrographic tasks. Ofthe 2,191 Ship's Met Logs Registered in the archives at Bracknellonly 32 are from Royal Naval ships. These are entered in red inkin one of the two registers covering this period, in the other,'HMS' identifies each warship.

4. Information from the 43,936 warship Deck Logs had not beenkeyed into the MDB. Random observations extracted from WarshipDeck Logs at Kew were compared with fiche records from the MDBand proved without exception to be new observations.

5. Merchant Ship Meteorological Forms kept by merchant shipsnot keeping a full Met Office Log Book appear to have been in usesince around 1900, according to the registers in the archives,but no Met Forms for the period 1911 to 1920 remain in thearchives. The low number of observations for this period suggeststhat this Met Form information also was never keyed.

6. The average number of observations in each of the 2,191Ship's Met Log Books at Brackne11, is just less than one hundred.As the total number of observations in the MDB for the period isjust 189,233 it suggests that all these observations came fromShip's Met Log Books alone and that non of the data in 43,936Warship Deck Logs at Kew or Met Forms for the period was evertransferred to the MDB.

MARITIME ACTIVITY 1911 TO 1920

7. At the turn of the century the Royal Navy enjoyed theconfidence of the British people, but suffered from seriousmaterial and manpower weaknesses. Many of the ships and weaponswere obsolete, the fleet was undermanned and authoritarianismbequeathed by the Victorian era rather than progressive

Inanagement was a characteristic of its senior officers.

8. Admiral Sir John Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1904. Hewas dynamic and ruthless, yet understood man management and warat sea. In the teeth of powerful opposition he scrapped 150 olderships, focused on the threat from Germany and introduced the allbig gun battleship Dreadnought. Launched in 1906, the Dreadnoughtrendered all earlier battleships obsolete.

9. Although Churchill enjoyed political credit for much of thischange, the fleet that fought the First World War was Fisher'screation. His foresight was to prove uncannily accuratepredicting the influence of the submarine, the revolution thatairborne weapons would bring and the need for large numbers ofcombined operations craft, 'amphibian hippopotami' as he calledthem.

10. A strong individualist he did not get on with politicians,the army and to some extent his own staff. He distrusted staffwork and regarded discussion as a time wasting destroyer ofthought and delayer of action. Traditions of great naval men diehard in the Service and even today selection for and a pass inthe Staff Course is not essential for future promotion, whereasin the Army and Royal Air Force a successful Staff Course ismandatory for promotion.

11. The Merchant Fleet enjoying the Royal Navy's dominance ofthe seas traded throughout the world and the great British Empirein large numbers up to and after the First World War. Even duringthe war met observations continued. Some 500 logs were receivedfrom 'selected' merchant ships during the war years.

12. Weather observations in both Met Log Books and Deck Logswere accurately taken and meticulously recorded throughout thisperiod.

METEOROLOGICAL LOG BOOKS

13. Registers in the archives at Bracknell show that 2191 logbooks were received between 1910 and 1920. They are loggedsequentially as received from 13482 to 15673 and appear in theMaritime Data Base under series 201. Each entry in the registershows the ships name, the Captain's name, the start andcompletion date of each voyage and its route. The register alsogives an assessment of the quality of observation, recording thenames of the observers who kept the log and took observations.

14. The quality assessment is given as Good, Very Good orExcellent. There is no assessment below good althoughoccasionally there is an ominous blank without a comment.

x-15. An example of a page from the style in use is at annex D.Their location in the archives is shown in annex B' .

16. 337 Met Logs recorded in the registers are missing from theshelves of the archives, through no apparent reason. Missingnumbers are spread throughout the period 1911 to 1916. The period

* \he A~~03 to ~\5 dOCU~t- .Clfe, lo.b;I€J "6) v ooJ J to o\\vw c'ommo/t lak/i~\J\~ tk OJ\(\Qkes t-o Cl \'e~&t 0Y\ \03book daf--o.. ~ {q3b L 1~4-8. -rite o(~ CUl~<A'Ie f\()t- ~\eVd.I\t t-o ~,,\S dOC vtMlt-

1916 to 1920 is complete.

17. Most observations from the Met Log Books have been keyedinto the Marine Data Base. However, a proportion of NorthAtlantic observations have not been keyed. In additionobservations at the beginning and end of each voyage often hadnot been keyed. There is no obvious reason for this but perhapsit was thought that the data base was flush with observations inthese areas.

18. By counting the the number of observations not keyed in asample of 50 Logs and assuming this pattern throughout, it wasestimated that 30,000 additional observations might be availableto add to the MDB.

DECK LOGS AT KEW

19. There are 43,936 Deck Logs in the archives at Kew from RoyalNaval warships, with an average of 177 observations per log,some are fairly blank, others have many more observations thanaverage. Random comparisons with fiche information from the MDBproved weather observations in these logs are not held nor haveever been keyed into the Maritime Data Base.

20. These logs offer over 7 million observations of quality fromaround the world to add to the Maritime Data Base. This is basedon a sample of observations taken every 40 Deck Logs, averagedout and extrapolated for 43,936 Logs.

21. Readings are recorded at the end of each watch 0400, 0800,1200, 1600, 2000, 2359. The geographical position is onlyrecorded at noon each day. Therefore interpolation would beneeded to produce a position for each observation.

22. Throughout this period Deck Logs were issued in two styles,one for large ships and one for smaller warships. The styleissued to large warships has an impressive thick hard cover withhigh quality paper making up 180 pages. One side per day givingone years recordings in one book. Entries are very neat and thehigh quality paper is as pristine today as the day entries weremade eighty odd years ago.

23. Smaller warships had thinner logs covering a shorter periodand with less impressive covers. Some of these logs are fromriver and harbour craft but others give quality world wideobservations.

24. The Deck Logs in the archives are numbered with numbers from32574 to 76510. In the registers they appear by namealphabetically and not by year.

25. The deck logs from the 32 warships also keeping Met Logsduplicate each others observations. A list of these warships isat annex J.

ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS AVAILABLE

26. The following could be added to the Data Base:

Met Log Books - 30,000 observations mainly from the NorthAtlantic.

Warship DeckLogs

- 5,760,000 observations if ship's position isinterpolated betweennoon positions.

2,000,000 estimated observations from smallervessels

27. Expressed by Global Area:

AtlanticNorth South

Med Indian OceanNorth South

PacificNorth South

Met Log Book 44% 13% 23% 10% 5% 3% 2%

Warship Deck 45% 7% 25% 8% 5% 7% 3%

28. The simplest and easiest way to add the additional Ship'sMet Log Book data would be to key all the observations in all theMet Logs again. This is clearly a very expensive option and itprobably is not worth trying to add the 30000 mainly NorthAtlantic observations.

29. To key the information from 43,936 Deck Logs is a lengthyand costly exercise particularly when access is difficult as inthe archives at Kew. Although removal from Kew is not normallyallowed the only realistic solution would be to get exceptionalapproval to remove the logs in batches and either put theinformation on film or key directly into a data base.

Martin H Rhodes

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Annex J

Warship Met Log Books 1911 to 1920

HMS Mutine 30/11/10 to 29/03/1130/03/11 to 27/07/1128/07/11 to 17/08/1112/03/12 to 20/04/1226/08/12 to 22/12/1223/12/12 to 21/04/1322/04/13 to 01/08/1315/11313 to 03/01/9406/03/14 to 22/06/14

Cornwallis 07/08/11 to 03/10/11

Fantome 16/03/11 to 04/11/1120/05/13 to 16/09/1308/04/14 to 14/08/14

Merlin 01/06/11 to 31/12/11

Seal ark 19/03/12 to 09/10/1220/06/13 to 20/10/13

Skipjack 01/10/12 to 31/01/13

Hyacinth 09/06/13 to 12/08/1324/06/14 to 22/07/14

Worcester 23/09/13 to 25/06/1404/11/16 to 11/04/17

Endeavour 01/01/16 to 18/06/16

Zaria 07/07/16 to 07/11/1608/11/16 to 07/03/1708/03/17 to 05/07/1706/07/17 to 29/10/1730/10/17 to 22/02/1823/02/18 to 18/06/1819/06/18 to 16/10/1814/02/19 to 16/04/19

Roxburgh 14/12/17 to 07/01/18

Oxfordshire 23/09/18 to 27/02/18