Wind, wave, and weather. Read any logbook from the great age of American sail and you are likely to see merely a dry record of a ship's journey. And yet, as any researcher into maritime history can tell you, amid the constant litany of the direction of the wind, the course of the ship upon the ocean, and the atmospheric conditions that could bless or bedevil a ship, appear occasional vignettes into life and work at sea. Put a pen into a man's hands poised over paper and there is no telling what he might write or draw. Most often he only did what was required – a simple chronicle of progress at sea. But he might also record the punishment meted out to a sailor who balked at climbing into the rigging during a storm. Or copy a few words of a favorite song he heard during the dogwatch that evening. Or comment on that strange ship on the horizon that he thought was a pirate. Or sketch some landfall to help him remember how the shoreline looked for the next time he navigated upon those waters. Scholars have used this additional information to explore shipboard experiences. This chapter is less concerned with describing that life at sea than examining how logbooks speak to us across time, became the metaphor for the sailor's life, and ultimately contributed to mainstream culture in the development of American literature.

Whatever the logbook's distant impact beyond the confines of a ship, the idea of maintaining an official record of a voyage had its greatest impact on the world of the common sailor. As an important navigational aid, logbooks were expected to be accurate. For the sailor, then, the logbook not only measured a ship's progress, but its veracity became a testimony to truth. James Fenimore Cooper has Tom Coffin affirm in The Pilot that he had killed more than 100 whales in his lifetime by declaring, “It's no bragging, sir, to speak a log-book truth!” In addition, in both physical and mental terms the logbook became an instrument of memory. The logbook itself was a written record of a voyage, but it also reflected a certain view of time and place that gave shape to a narrative form.