UK Colonial Registers & Royal Navy logbooks: Making the past available for the future
Visit the website
The project has digitised around 45,000 logbook pages, and over 20,000 images. Logbooks from many historic ships and voyages are included in the project, including those from: the Beagle, the Endevour and Discovery.
Hear Dr Dennis Wheeler discussng the project on a recent Podcast.
There is an important and growing need for reliable climatic data, especially from the oceanic regions, to enable a more comprehensive understanding of current issues in the global warming debate.
This project seeks to identify sources of old, previously overlooked, marine meteorological data from colonial (especially lighthouse) records and from the logbooks of Royal Navy vessels through from the 18th century and, thereby, to lend a longer-term perspective to more recent climatic variations. The original documents will be imaged for record and preservation purposes. The data will then be abstracted, quality-controlled and made available for scientific studies through a number of internationally-recognised websites fo climatic data. The images of the more historically valuable logbooks of famous voyages will be made freely available through partner websites for more general consultation.
Lead site University of Sunderland
Partner institutions: The Met Office; British Atmospheric Data Centre; The National Archives
Download the Project Plan (PDF)
Download the final report (PDF)