As much odd stuff as I sell on eBay I’m hardly one to talk, but in the course of researching prices for a newish pair of black Effingham riding boots I was going to list, I ran across this listing for “SS EFFINGHAM CARGO SHIPS LOG 1914-1926” and it has two bids and is already up to $ 51.00!
I appreciate esoteric interests as much as anyone but this seems to be pushing the envelope. What is the interest with old ships logs? What historical interest could they possibly contain other than a collection of cargo lists?
I think some people have vicarious experiences reading the old logs, just as they do while reading a good book. They see themselves on the journies, and escape for a while from their boring day-to-day existance. People whose day-to-day lives are not boring may enjoy the connection with what they are doing with what people did 100 years ago.
1914 to 1926. In 1914, America was not yet in WWI. In 1926 the stock market had not yet crashed. Travel in that time was an adventure. You couldn’t just get on a jet and fly to Europe in eight hours. You had to spend many days on a ship. Or if you wanted to fly to the South Pacific you rode in a flying boat that made stops in remote places like Hawaii or Midway. Quite different from showing up at an airport, slogging your way through security checkpoints, and then being given a cramped seat! It was, by today’s standards, a simpler time. No microprocessors. Work was done by machines and muscle. If it was hot, you sweated instead of turning up the air conditioner. If it was cold, you put on layers of heavy clothing instead of PolarTek. Some people’s idea of a vacation is staying in a cookie-cutter hotel and laying by the poole (which is only yards away from a perfectly good ocean). For others, much of the enjoyment comes from the journey.
I think that old ship’s logs allow people to imagine travelling in a manner which their modern schedules will not allow.
becasue people collect them. why do people collectany given item? some people collect navel lint, or gum wrappers, or rubber bands. at least you can get a good if boring read out of a cargo log=\
That particular entry was for a cargo ship, but perhaps the interest can be explained by the Internet-fueled boom in home genealogy. Tracking passenger voyages back to the Old Country, perhaps?
Or perhaps a family member worked as crew on the ship? If I knew my great-grandfather worked on a steamer (or whatever), it might be interesting to have the logbook.
IIRC, it was old ship logs which helped disprove the “micro blackhole” theory of what happened at Tunguska was the logs of ships which would have been in the most likely area for the blackhole to have emerged from the Earth. Since none of the logs repeated seeing anything like what happened at Tunguska, it was pretty easy to prove that it couldn’t have been a blackhole.
“Style 2000L Size 7 WC” (women’s boot I think but not sure) Looks as if they were worn 3-4 times at most. Apparently top quality riding boots cost hundreds when new, but I’ll list them super cheap I’m thinking 29-39 dollars or so.
Hi, my name’s Jonathan Chance and I collect old written items.
(Everyone say ‘Hi Jonathan’!)
Letters, diaries, postcards, terms of indenture, what-have-you.
It’s a great way to get a feel for another era to actually have it in someone’s handwriting. Many times people will write things informally that they wouldn’t when they sit down to make notes in a journal or somesuch. I think a log would count the same way.
Examples:
A civil war era letter I have from a man in some border state (I forget which one) in which he details his reaction to the ‘secess’ (secessionist) women being held at a local prison. He’s quite sympathetic to them personally.
A set of five journals from 1941-1945 from a man in Chicago. He spends quite a bit of time in 1941 detailing how he believes the US shouldn’t stand with Britain against the Axis because of the ‘outmoded’ and ‘exploitative’ English class system. Even in the Nazi’s are evil he wants nothing to do with standing side by side with England.
Excuse the nitpick but -
Johnny LA said ¨ You couldn’t just get on a jet and fly to Europe in eight hours. You had to spend many days on a ship. Or if you wanted to fly to the South Pacific you rode in a flying boat that made stops in remote places…¨
I didn’t mean to imply that one could take the China Clipper in 1926. What I meant was that travel before the Jet Age took longer and was more involved. Sometimes I forget to add stuff I thought everyone knew, like dates and such. Mea culpa.
