New Mediterranean Voyages

HMS Ben-my-Chree, one of our new ships.

For the last few weeks we’ve been watching the ‘% completed’ figure on the Old Weather front page creep ever closer to 100. We’re very close to completing the task we took on on October 12th, 2010, by transcribing every single log page (750,000 transcriptions). That’s an awesome achievement – take a moment to feel the victory.

But we’re not ready to decommission the project – there’s more yet to learn about the climate and the history of the early twentieth century. There are many logs in the National Archives that we’ve never looked at: some from our old friends, and some from new ships we’ve never before followed. So with support from JISC, we returned to the National Archives, camera in hand, to collect a new set of logbook images – and we’re launching the first batch of them today as the start of oldWeather phase II. (There will be more to come).

This first batch of new logs is timely for those of us in the North, feeling the cold of winter set in, because these are voyages in the Mediterranean. Forget the chill and the dark, and travel vicariously through warm and history-filled seas. If you have fond memories of a previous voyage on HMS Africa, Britannia, Caesar, Liverpool, or Theseus; furlough is over, your ship needs you – please report to your former station at your earliest convenience. If you are looking for new company and new adventures, HMS Aphis, Ark Royal, Barham, Ben-my-Chree, Blenheim, Canterbury, Castor, Galatea, Grafton, Minto, St George, and Warspite launch today for the first time with us. The point of departure, in all cases, is http://oldweather.org.
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