Reading the Handwriting

Cursive handwriting can often be hard to interpret. Reading Agreements and Logbooks comes with practice: there is no other practical way of recognizing the letters than frequent reading, and even then different masters have different writing styles. But here are a few tips and tricks to help you read the documents.

1. Some masters were still using the stylized "s" which is an "s" stretched out until it resembles a cursive "f".

From the Official Logbook of the Birdie, 1866

Extract from the official logbook of the sailing vessel Birdie (ON 48213) 1866, page 11.

Reproduced courtesy of the Maritime History Archive, Memorial University, St. John's, NL.

2. Where you have recognized a whole word, concentrating on the individual letters and comparing them with letters in words still to be deciphered, may help.

3. Ditto, otherwise abbreviated to "do" or "〃" is a common abbreviation throughout the lists of crew agreements. It means "as above" and was used instead of repeating the same information.

From the Crew Agreement of the Juno, 1871

Extract from the crew agreement of the sailing vessel Juno (ON 48477) 1871, page 3.

Reproduced courtesy of the Maritime History Archive, Memorial University, St. John's, NL.

4. Often masters will use superscript abbreviations, such as Jan^y. This works by dropping all the remaining letters but superscripting the final.

From the Official Logbook of the Whinfell, 1863

Extract from the official logbook of the sailing ship Whinfell (ON 44157) 1863, page 33. In the examples above "Enam.^d " is short for Enamelled, and "Look.^g " is short for Looking.

Reproduced courtesy of the Maritime History Archive, Memorial University, St. John's, NL.

5. If all else fails, websites like Google can be helpful. Write what you think the word is and see what is suggested.