A Sailor's Logbook

In this firsthand account of the life aboard the ships of the Great Lakes, Mark Thompson weaves together the threads of a story that relives a centuries-old tradition. The logbooks that crewmembers kept date back long before Christopher Columbus made his crossing of the Atlantic in 1492. These logbooks detailed everything from weather conditions, ports of call, and landmarks to the daily instruction of the crewmembers. As the nature of the shipping industry changed so did the information contained in these logbooks. They went from detailing the tuner workings of managing a crew to only holding statistical information relevant to the journey Thompson has sought to take us back to the clays when logbooks were actually a look inside the life of a sailor.