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One of the biggest appeals of the ocean during this time, at least from my observations, is that the ocean, and what lies beyond the horizon, was still widely unexplored at the time. These were some of the intriguing things that I found, which helped me come to that conclusion.
Intrigue and Mystery
Intrigue and Mystery
This was a sailor's ship log that I found in the UMD special collections archives. The log was dated from around 1810-1850, the captain of the vessel unknown from what I had read and carried various amounts of cargo, including slaves. Ocean travel was very popular around this time, as imported goods was a big market for this time period.
The logs were filled with what I expected from a ship log for this type of business: transactions, quick math equations, logs from where the ship sailed. However, the most intriguing part was a single page from the beginning.
There was this one page that depicted a picture of a strange-looking fish. I was not able to find any context surrounding it when I read through the log. What was so special about this fish that it moved the captain to draw it in his log book? Did this fish even exist or did the captain merely draw this out of fascination of the unknown? What this drawing does say is that there was so much of the sea that people found captivating, even if they did not understand it fully.
Willingness to Explore the Unknown
Willingness to Explore the Unknown
This is a newspaper article from the newspaper The Baltimore American, published in 1905. It details what seems to be an early version of a submarine being developed in France, or at least some form of submersible vessel. It details how this submersible would be used to innovate travel by sea in a world where passenger travel by boat is dangerous and infrequent for large parties. It is portrayed not just as a military or scientific innovation, but as a potential leap forward in civilian maritime transportation. From what can be inferred from the article, there was high demand to explore and travel over the ocean to new destinations. Perhaps this vessel could have been used for exploration and research as well.
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