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                                        Deck Logs from World War II

US NAvy deck logs from World War II are kept in the National Archives and are available for public use. Zooniverse’s Old Weather project is based on information from nineteen different ships and specifically focuses on information that would be helpful in an investigation of weather conditions. The ships chosen to take part of this investigation were chosen to represent a variety of vessels in terms of size, age, and general use during the war. Each log includes information of current position of the ship, speed, navigational changes, and individual notes written by officers. These records belong to a wider selection of archives, each Navy ship was ordered to have a deck log with a chronological account of events of the day. In this specific investigation conducted by Zooniverse, their main goal is to use the daily annotations on weather conditions in order to serve as tools to understand climate and weather changes in specific geographic locations. Although this is Zooniverse's main focus, it is important to understand the vast variety of uses these deck logs can have in numerous fields of research. Deck logs expose the daily life in these ships, and because of the accuracy and specificity of the information found in these logs, they can serve as extremely accurate evidence if properly digitized. ^[a]

Deck logs were issued by the US Navy and were printed by the US Government Printing Office. From this point on, the logs were provided to each individual ship and each ship had to return the log on a monthly basis. One of the main questions that these logs create is what immediate use were they able to have. In today’s analysis of the records, they provide a specific chronological description of day to day activities on each ship, but at the time it is not clear how they were used. According to the National Archives the collection of these records has been able to serve “as evidence in legal proceedings in naval, admiralty, or civil courts” but it is not clear if it was the main intention of having these records.^[1]  Although this displays potential use from the logs, it does not explain how they were used during the war. Although Zooniverse focuses its research on weather and movement reports found on the logs, it is important to acknowledge the vast amounts of information each log contains. A typical deck log for a ship could be “120 pages or more per month, or over 1200 pages per year”. ^[2]  In general a deck log consisted of “daily chronology of certain events for administrative and legal purposes” hinting that the use of these logs was entirely based on information keeping, and had no clear operational use.^[3]  Some of the categories found in these logs included, absentees, bearings, collisions, prisoners, deaths, honors, incidents at sea, tactical formation, and depth of water, displaying hard work and dedication from those in charge of maintaining the log up to date. ^[4] 

The climate and weather section from the logs focuses on the area’s temperature, change in position, and coordinates. This information was found at the top of each report, with a table including all the information. Below the table were the “Operational Remarks” written by officers about specific changes or reasoning for annotations in the table, and at the bottom there was the signature of the commanding officer approving the information in the report. It’s worth noting that each event is written and signed by a different officer, there was not only one person in charge of writing the report. Each page described changes in the ship’s speed, what was happening in the area, and any relevant information of events in the day. Logs were straightforward and in most cases were uniform for every ship, allowing for an easy transcription of specific data. Something else that caught my attention was how some records were filled out with a typewriter and others were filled with pencil, displaying the difference between ships in terms of their available technology. At the bottom of every report, there is a small caption that reads, “To be forwarded directly to the Commander in Chief, US Fleet, either at the end of an operation or the end of a calendar month.” This caption shows centralized control of these reports and displays how their main purpose was serving as a collection of information outside of the ship, it had no operational use.

The Old Weather project’s main goal consists of digitizing these records in order to create computer models that allow for a deeper understanding of “weather and climate in extraordinary detail”. ^[5] These reports are extremely useful to achieve this and because of the use of tables and uniformity of the reports, the digitization process does not seem extremely complicated. While extremely valuable, it is also important to take into consideration the vast amount of information that is being lost in this process. The Old Weather project summary describes that apart from using the weather data in the reports, they want to “shine a new light on the dedicated work of thousands of service members who collected these observations” ^[6]. Although this seems ethical, their process of digitization does not allow for a proper representation of the work officers recording this information went through. Their crowdsourcing attempt to digitize was only focused on the position-time tables and ignored the individual remarks made by officers. Although it would require more time and technology, in order to properly transcribe these logs, it is essential to acknowledge the information written by those who were actually there.

 The idea of eventually being able to,  “train machine-learning systems to automatically transcribe the remaining millions of typed weather observations that were collected by the Navy” would be extremely valuable, but during this process, even more valuable information can be lost.^[7] This proposal of machine-learning digitization could not only apply to weather reports but any type of specific information in each deck log. Handwritten annotations were not well organized or even legible when written in pencil but it would be extremely useful to collect and digitize individual officer’s notes.

The National Archives crowdsourcing instructions describe that when handwriting is not understandable, the best way to make sense of it is to “Compare similar letters in the document to help confirm that you are reading the text correctly”. ^[8] This process reminded me of Vannevar Bush’s distinction between how computers and humans process information. Although it would  be easier to program a machine to digitize information, in the case of handwritten notes it doesn’t seem as efficient. Bush claimed the human mind , “operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts”^[9]. It requires more time but in order to find important connections found in the reports, it would be more valuable to have humans digitize these notes.

While this research is mainly based on the Weather reports, I is important to understand the magnitude of information available in these logs, and the implications of attempting to digitize them. A collection of these records in a digital database can allow researchers to easily find information on a certain person, location, ship or date. It would also allow relatives and veterans to have access to information that belongs to those who served and were part of these operations. For this reason, many projects and attempts of digitization were actually led by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This led me to reconsider the true value these deck logs can serve when digitized. In retrospect, the digitization of these records not only allows for interesting research such as weather reports, but it is also an ethical approach for families and veterans to have a deeper connection and understanding of how life was on one of these ships. For this reason the digitization of these records should be properly done, leaving out the least information possible. This process would most likely have to include human work and although it would take considerably more time it would be necessary in order to utilize these reports in the most efficient manner.

Bibliography

“Navy Deck Logs Available in the National Archives Catalog.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, www.archives.gov/research/military/logbooks/navy-online.

Navy Ship's Deck Log Content, www.usssavage.org/NavyShipsDeckLogContent.html.

“A New Old Weather Project.” Old Weather Blog, 16 Dec. 2020, oldweather.wordpress.com/2020/12/16/a-new-old-weather-project/.

“Transcription Tips.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/transcribe/tips.

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 Jan. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/.

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