From the Archives - Did the ship's log record the birth of the Captain's son?

This is a short excerpt from the upcoming Member Monday Program The Colcord Collection with Cipperly Good and MP Bogan.
Joanna Carver Colcord and her brother Lincoln Ross Colcord were influential locally, nationally, and internationally in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Although we love them for co-founding Penobscot Marine Museum with other children of sea captains, each made huge contributions to the literature and documentation of the American and global merchant marine. In their own rights, Joanna was a noted social worker and Lincoln a political commentator.
Thanks to an impressive 114 cubic feet of archives related to the siblings donated between 2005 and 2021, researchers can delve into the various topics of which the Colcords were experts. As the collection has been donated piecemeal, it has been the job of Cipperly Good, the Richard Saltonstall Jr. Curator of Maritime History, and her crack team of volunteers to reorganize and rewrite the finding aid to provide better access to researchers. The most current volunteer to tackle the project is MP Bogan, a retired book conservator.
This video highlights a logbook - during the full Member Monday program, Cipperly and MP will give a behind the scenes look at the Colcord Collection- highlighting some of their favorite finds while sorting the papers and giving a brief overview of how the collection was categorized by topic. Join them at the next Member Monday, at noon on September 11.
Member Mondays are included as a member benefit and feature intimate monthly Zoom lunchtime programs presented by staff members. Topics vary every month - it’s a fun way to take a close look at items in our collections and get a peek behind the scenes at PMM.
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[@davidgrim5990]

I think the culture was different then. They had a very professional idea of what should or should not be in the log book. I'm sure marriages would also not be in the log book. Only thing I think they might have included was the death of a passenger.

[@PenobscotMarineMsm]

Yes, the logbook was the official record of the voyage and many stick to professional observations. However, some logs (and charts!) in our collection do include personal experiences, such as the leather-bound logbook of the ship STATE OF MAINE from September 6, 1896-April 17, 1898 kept by Henry Griffin Curtis. It includes the ship leaking badly in a gale, not making progress across the equator, son George is on board and catching fish, has purple stamp "* Opened. Crew. Beef *", celebrating his 46th birthday, Manila stowaways, sending mail ashore by bumboatmen, steward confronted mate with a knife, adventures of daughter Hope and Miss Gordon (may be Grace Gordon, his second wife) making desserts and being seasick, and Hope's 16th birthday.