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George H, you wrote:
"Well, of course, there would be well-navigated vessels, and
casually-navigated vessels."

How many whaling vessels were "casually navigated"? What evidence do you have 
for that? This idea which you expounded earlier, that whaleships chasing 
sperm whales would just sail around without any particular destination, is 
nice in theory if you've learned that sperm whales are found much more widely 
than any other whales, but it fails factually. Vessels seeking sperm whales 
did NOT sail around at random. They sailed to certain specific whaling 
grounds where they hunted (and on the grounds, it's true that they were less 
concerned with daily positions but they still usually recorded them) and they 
frequently sailed to specific ports, not randomly like the lost seadogs you 
described, but directly and purposefully.

Indeed, the American whalers of the nineteenth century travelled enormous 
distances in search of good hunting grounds. The fleets of New Bedford, 
Nantucket, New London, Sag Harbor, Provincetown and the others, were 
ocean-going vessels. There were a handful of vessels engaged in coastal 
whaling and a small amount of whaling could be done with minimal navigation, 
but those were the exceptions that prove the rule.

And George, you wrote:
"I had argued, in [7227], that only the better whaling logs would have been 
preserved in museums, and the others scrapped, so Frank's thirty logbooks 
would not have been typical of American whaling logs as a whole."

I'm quite sure now, George, that you simply don't realize how many logbooks 
have been preserved. There's a book that I would recommend to everyone on 
NavList. It's titled simply "The Charles W. Morgan" originally authored by 
John F. Leavitt in 1973 with significant revisions through 1998 (get a recent 
edition). It's available from Mystic Seaport. You will find a complete 
outline of every whaling voyage undertaken by the Morgan. And in Appendix I, 
there is a list of the available logbooks and journals. Over 80% of the 
voyages are represented by at least one logbook or journal (the difference is 
a matter of degree --journals tend to be unofficial records). I gotta yell 
that one: OVER EIGHTY PERCENT. A few of these are available online. You can 
read them right now...

Now, one could argue that these logbooks were preserved because the Charles W. 
Morgan was some sort of extraordinary vessel, and therfore the logbooks are 
not representative of whaling in general, but there is no evidence of that. 
The Morgan was a completely typical ocean-going whaleship. Its case is 
atypical only in that the vessel itself has been preserved and therefore 
there is more interest in, and a higher-paying market for, the preservation 
of her logbooks and other records. This is a type of bias but it is a 
POSITIVE bias for anyone interested in navigation or other incidental aspects 
of the voyages since it means that there has been a strong interest in every 
voyage and in every logbook regardless of other significance. 

I wrote previously:
"Logbooks from long-distance whaling voyages exist in large
numbers and they provide tremendous "primary source" evidence. That evidence
beats speculation any day."

And George, you replied:
"And I agree, there is much evidence, on many questions, to be found in those
logs that should not be ignored. But the question that's being asked can be
answered ONLY if we KNOW that Frank's studied collection of thirty logs is
somehow representative of all whalers' logs, good and bad."

Ahh... but of course it is impossible to KNOW such a thing with absolute 
certainty, and so effectively you're just making an excuse for speculation AS 
IF no evidence is available. 

And you wrote:
"And because we 'need to bear in mind the biases introduced by selective 
preservation' (to use Frank's own words) unless he can demonstrate that there 
has been no such bias, then no such conclusions can be drawn."

I'm sorry I confused with my earlier comment. When I said we need to "bear in 
mind" these potential biases, I meant that we need to be on the alert for 
them. Of course, it would be foolish to ignore mountains of evidence simply 
because we are paranoid about preservation bias. It exists, and we can deal 
with it.

You concluded:
"I repeat, we have to keep an open mind."

Indeed! Should we leave our minds gaping open?? Perhaps every logbook I have 
ever examined is some crazy exception. Sure. It's possible. Better yet, 
perhaps every logbook preserved is part of a diabolical plot to hide the 
incompetence of American whaling captains. It's possible! 

Or maybe primary source historical evidence is what it is: an imperfect record 
but by far the best we can hope for without a time machine. The eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries are not that far gone. We can read what they wrote. 
We can understand how they worked, if not how they thought, by looking at the 
records that they have left for us.

-FER



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