The violence, beauty and mystery of the sea has always captured the souls of men. The sailor’s need to record his tales of hazardous voyages and strange and exotic landfalls (today met by publication of a Cruise Book) has arguably been a significant part of human literature since the invention of writing. The story of Noah in the Bible, the Mediterranean wanderings of Ulysses chronicled in The Odyssey by Homer, and the “Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor” found in The Book of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights are just a few of the thousands of books dedicated throughout history to documenting the adventures and voyages of ships and the sailors who crew them.
In more recent history Cruise Books can be traced to the fifteenth century invention of the Naval Log Books, which were used during the age of exploration to document trade routes, navigation hazards and discoveries. In a sense, the log books of Christopher Columbus (one of the most copied of such early records), were the 15th century version of a Cruise Book commemorating the voyages of the Santa Maria. By the mid-seventeenth century Log Books had become formalized to such an extent that the British Admiralty issued this order in their Naval Instructions of 1731:
“The Captain is, from the time of his going on board to keep a Journal, and to be careful to note therein all Occurrences, viz. Place where the Ship is at Noon: changes of Wind and Weather; Salutes, with the Reasons thereof; Remarks on Unknown Places; and in general, every Circumstance that concerns the Ship, her Stores, and Provisions.”
(National Maritime Museum website, London UK, “The History of Naval Logbooks”)
Naval Log Books were then, as they are today, “Official Government Documents.”
In U.S. Navy tradition, the official Log Books were often used by the crew as a departure point for an “unofficial” Souvenir Cruise Book of the voyage. Such early Cruise Books were produced by the crew for the crew and were funded by the crew. In the later part of the nineteenth century these early Cruise Books “commemorated special events such as the Spanish-American War, The Great White Fleet’s world voyage or the presence of a dignitary traveling on an international cruise. A few were issued for U.S. naval vessels that served in World War I, but the practice was not widespread. It took the greatest Naval War in history, World War II, to establish the practice. During this period millions of Americans were involved with the U.S. Navy and the dram of sea warfare, especially in the Pacific campaigns. These Americans naturally wanted a Souvenir (Cruise Book) that recorded the action in which their ship or unit took part in World War II.” * One has but to look at the myriads of advertisements in All Hands magazine during the years between 1945 and 1947, to recognize the sailor’s need to have something tangible, something real to remember their time sailing in harm’s way.
Although no government funds were expended directly on the books, the Navy did encourage personnel to spend time producing them. Surely the Navy realized that these books not only promoted unit morale but also maintained good public relations with relatives and taxpayers back home to whom the Navy would have to go for the funds to maintain a postwar Navy.”*
Today, the Cruise Book tradition is an integral part of a modern U.S. Navy warship’s deployment, with most ships producing a Cruise Book every two years or so.
* (Cruise Books of the United States Navy in World War II, A Bibliography, Dean L. Mawdsley, M.D., Glencannon Press, 2nd edition, 2004, pages xii-xiii) |
