As we dug further into Captain Joy’s logbook, we began to study researchers’ use of these documents over time. The idea of studying logbooks began as early as the 1840s, credited to Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury of the US Navy. Maury, who would later side firmly with the Confederacy and the institution of slavery during the Civil War, is arguably the founder of oceanography in the United States. In 1834, the year before Captain Joy left aboard the Roman, Maury published a paper in the American Journal of Science and Arts that used logbooks from previous voyages to quantify the best time and latitude to round Cape Horn. He went on to assemble collective global maps of seasonal wind direction, wind speed, and ocean currents. Over time, he collected 567 logbooks, or at least summaries, from which he and his staff created maps to help whalemen know where and when to sail to find sperm or right whales, the two major types that they could capture under sail.
In the late 1920s, as the last American whaleships sputtered out of New Bedford, a naturalist named Charles Haskins Townsend, director of the New York Aquarium, took Maury’s data and added information from another 695 voyages. Townsend made a new, more readable set of maps for sperm and right whale abundance and range.
Around the same time, a nostalgia for life at sea aboard sailing ships was percolating in parts of the United States. Historians began to pour over the logbooks to learn about historic navigation, whaling technologies, and the diverse backgrounds and experiences of the men and women who sailed on these voyages. For example, on Joy’s last voyage we can be nearly certain that he had a crew that included White New Englanders, Native Americans, and free Black men. He also probably picked up a few people when they stopped in the Cape Verdes and later a few more in the Pacific Islands.