The Log-books used by Ships of the East India Company

Extract

When in 1877 Clements R. Markham edited The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster Kt to the East Indies he remarked that the first log-book with printed headings was that used by Captain Reddell on his voyage in the Samuel & Anna in 1702–3. He does not say that this became standard practice in the ships of the East India Company but it would seem that some of his readers thought that this must have been the case. In The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times David W. Waters refers to the Samuel & Anna log and follows it with the comment: ‘The logs of British warships were still ruled and captioned in manuscript in the eighteenth century.’