T&T: Logbooks - Navy

[Rich Gano]

Regardless of whether or where it is actually written, it is apparent that
those of us wanting to use our logs as evidence admissible in a court of law
had better shift from something that pages cannot be removed from to bound,
harder to write in books.

Entries in Navy deck logs are made by the Quartermaster of the Watch (QMOOW)
on the bridge at sea and by the Petty Officer of the Watch (POOW) in port.
As Officer of the Deck and later as Captain, I could also make entries and
sign them.  Regardless, whatever the enlisted man in regular charge of the
log wrote stayed in that log - forever.  If I in either of my capacities as
OOD or CO wanted to change something he had written, only a single line
through his entry could be made (and initialed) before the change was
entered.

A quite possibly apocryphal story goes that the regularly inebriated CO of
some ship or other stumbled back aboard one evening, and his presence and
state of sobriety ("CO stumbled aboard drunk.") was duly entered in the deck
log by the disgusted POOW.  Upon reviewing the deck log before sending it
off to the Navy Historical Center, the CO called the POOW to his cabin and
reamed him out about reporting on the Captain's drunkenness.  The POOW bided
his time and continued reporting the CO's routine comings and goings as "CO
returned aboard" or "CO stumbled aboard SOBER" letting the reader infer what
he might.

Rich Gano
CALYPSO (GB-42 #295)
Southport, FL