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logy, astronomy, oceanography, and cartography, and a very extensive bit of whale watching,
too.
Ship's captains and science officers had long been in the habit of keeping detailed logbooks
during their voyages. Careful entries included the date and often the time of various measure-
ments, such as how many knots the ship was traveling, calculations of latitude and longitude
on specific days, and observations of ocean conditions, wildlife, weather, and more. A
sample entry in a ship's log is shown in
Figure 1-3
.
Figure 1-3. Old ship's log of the Steamship Bear as it steamed north as part of the 1884 Greely res-
cue mission to the arctic. Nautical logbooks are an early source of large-scale time series data.
[
1
]
Maury saw the hidden value in these logs when analyzed collectively and wanted to bring
that value to ships' captains. When Maury was put in charge of the US Navy's office known
as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, he began a project to extract observations of winds
and currents accumulated over many years in logbooks from many ships. He used this time
series data to carry out an analysis that would enable him to recommend optimal shipping
routes based on prevailing winds and currents.
