(This story was updated because an earlier version included inaccuracies.) Correction: Researchers have been looking through ship logbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries . FALMOUTH — In the reading room at the Falmouth Museums on the Green , oceanographer Caroline Ummenhofer carefully turned the antique pages of a logbook that once belonged to the whaling ship Commodore Morris out of Falmouth. In the quiet space, the paper rustled, as if whispering the details of the crew’s four-year journey into the South Pacific on the hunt for sperm whales from 1853 to 1857. Covered with curling words written in ink now turned rusty brown, the folios are punctuated by drawn and stamped whales and whale tails recording the crew’s catches and the leviathans that got away, and detailed sketches of ships with billowing sails commemorating the crew’s encounters with other vessels. Here there are many tales of life on the remote seas 171 years ago, including fights, murders and losses of crew fallen into the sea. But what most interests Ummenhofer, an associate scientist in the physical oceanography department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , and fellow researcher Tim Walker , a history professor at UMass Dartmouth with a special interest in maritime history, are the logbook keeper’s weather observations. With the help of student and volunteer researchers, and in cooperation with the New Bedford Whaling Museum , the pair is in the midst of a project to glean historical weather data from 18th- and 19th-century whaling ship logbooks to get a picture of remote ocean conditions before, during and after the Industrial Revolution. The goal is to create more accurate climate models and to build a better understanding of how climate has and continues to change. ‘Absolutely priceless’ logbooks There are thousands of logbooks to review. Most are […]
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