For the first time, the public has free online access to historic Navy, Coast Guard and Revenue Cutter ship logs between the pre-Civil War period through World War II under a digitization project announced by the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As a result of this National Archives–NOAA partnership, and with the aid of citizen scientists, anyone, anywhere, with online access can glimpse a wealth of weather data and climate patterns from an age long before the
Weather Channel.
In addition to weather data, these logbooks offer invaluable information on U.S. maritime history, military operations, scientific exploration, diplomacy, advances in technology, and near-hourly accounts of adventures on the high seas, including rescues and shipwrecks.
Digital images of the logbooks will be available on both the National Archives website at www.archives.gov and at www.oldweather.org. This ongoing digitization is part of the Obama-Medvedev Commission, which supports US-Russian relations through cooperation in many areas, including scientific study