Logbook of Edward Rhodes, 1670-76

Editor’s notes:

The following pages are photographs of a sailor’s personal logbook from six round-trip voyages

aboard English merchant vessels on the tobacco route between Gravesend, England, and the

Chesapeake colonies of Maryland and Virginia. The photographs comprise the entirety of the book,

save for a few blank pages at the end. The original logbook, housed in the University of Oxford’s

Bodleian Library, was photographed by this editor in 2012, and is being placed here to open the

document to a wider research audience.

Research involving this document will be outlined in the editor’s forthcoming PhD dissertation

through the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology. Relevant aspects of this

work include plots of each of Rhodes’ voyages utilising the daily coordinates as plotted and vessel

performance data. This document has also recently brought insights into sailing routes from England

to the Chesapeake, providing the earliest example of voyages along a previously unidentified

northern route to the Chesapeake, passing by the Azores, replacing a southern route through the

Caribbean.

To view the document in person, contact the Bodleian library with the collection number:

MS. Rawl d. 702

Alternatively, the logbook can be found on microfilm in the Maryland State Archives:

Wing Collection, MSA SC 4747

Partial transcription, from one complete voyage, can be found in:

John F. Wing, 1999. Bound by God... For Merryland: The Voyage of the Constant Friendship, 1671-

1672. Maryland State Archives and Maryland Historical Trust, Annapolis

edited and photographed by:

Scott A. Tucker

satucker@smcm.edu