About the Archives
The Seafarers Log Digital Archives is an online repository of the newspapers and records of the Seafarers Log, the official publication of the Seafarers International Union Atlantic, Gulf, Lakes and Inland Waters, AFL-CIO. Inside this database, you will find every issue of the Log from 1939 to the present day available for both viewing and downloading as PDF.
The bulk of the Log's digitized newspapers 1939-1994 were scanned from microfilm provided courtesy of the Paul Hall Center Maritime Library. Manual scans of the newspapers account for years 1984-1988 and then 1994-2003. All issues after 2003 are available in their original, digital PDF format.
In order to accommodate both our server capacity and the mobile data plans of our active seagoing members, the web copies of the PDFs have been compressed and optimized to a reasonable file size. This often comes at a cost to image quality, particularly with the microfilm scans. If you would like to request a higher quality file of older logs, you may contact archives@seafarerslog.org to make those arrangements.
Along with the complete run of Seafarers Logs, we also strive to share with the public the diverse and exhaustive amount of photography taken for the Log's pages. This will be a perpetually ongoing task, so check in regularly to see what new items have been added. We are particularly focused at the moment of getting the Log's oldest pictures up first, as many of these photos have a limited lifespan ahead of them.
If you are a researcher accessing the Log database, we humbly request that you properly cite/attribute any information used. Also, we ask that any third parties observe our copyright on the publications and photos.