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The researchers are also discovering where the boats fished, the technology they employed and how the fishing industry evolved in the 19th century. That sort of historical detail, according to Matthew McKenzie '98G, '03G, another Ph.D. candidate, can help them retell the story of New England fisheries.

During the four-month fishing season, for example,a sense of community often developed between the boat crews. Anchors and supplies were traded back and forth, and on Sundays the trading included stories and tobacco, according to the records.

"These guys would hail each other every day, talk to each other, trade gossip. They wouldn't fish on Sunday. They would smoke a pipe, have a 'gam,'" or conversation, says Alexander.

The researchers have also leafed through hundreds of maps, some dating back to the 18th century, that show the location of favored fishing grounds. By combining data from the logs with inferences drawn from the maps, they can postulate what those map locations looked like, what kind of birds and sea life could be found there and where boats might have gone down.

From the records, they have been able to infer changes in the industry itself, particularly after large French tub trawlers appeared on the scene in the 1850s.

"It became more of a merchant controlled industry," says Bill Leavenworth '90G, '99G, who works as a document researcher on the project. "Shareholders in the boats might not have been just locals or local merchants, but people from out of town. As the technology became more expensive, the cost grew beyond the assets of a local capital market. It shifted to an industry requiring much larger dories, tub trawls and boats that had to be equipped to stay out for much longer, and carry more stores and more people, and required more capital."

A particularly revelatory intersection between history and science comes from logbooks documenting catch sizes during the Civil War. As crewmen went to fight in the Union army, fish stocks bounced back, again proving that fishermen were depleting marine populations.

Some of the finds have even been intriguing in a gruesome fashion. In what Leavenworth calls the project's "slasher story," the captain of one boat arrived at a fishing ground in 1866 to find the crews of other boats had been washed overboard by a storm. He indicated in his log that the catch was very good, but his crew "took a man's leg out of a large cod."

See? You never know what you might find.

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