he was a captain's wife who painstakingly recorded five years of life with the Royal Navy ? and yet her name is unknown, and her husband is referred to only as Colonel T. B. Carter. The ship journal of Mrs. T. B. Carter, written between 1834 and 1839, is just one of many logbooks on display in the new exhibition 'Words from the Sea' at the Commissioner's House at the Bermuda Maritime Museum in Dockyard.

This is the 10th collaboration between the museum and the Bermuda Archives in the last four years. The exhibition features logbooks from the Fay & Geoffrey Elliott Collection of the Bermuda Archives, as well as those in the collection of the Bermuda Maritime Museum.

Mrs. Carter's diary is the only piece in the exhibition that shows a woman's perspective on navy life.

Anthropologist Tramaine Stovell, a recent graduate of Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, helped to read the logbooks, and spent a lot of time reading Mrs. Carter's journal. Although her job was really only to pick out the relevant passages, Mrs. Carter's life was so fascinating she couldn't help read it from cover to cover.

"When the opportunity to work on this emerged I was intrigued," said Ms Stovell. "When I was told that I was being given this to read I was excited. These are very personal depictions of life in this time period. This particular logbook was interesting because it was a different perspective. I had to read as much as I could to get a full understanding."

The journal is set mainly in Corfu, Greece. In her journal, Mrs. Carter faithfully recorded everything from parties and a knights tournament, to a mule ride through the mountains.

One entry on December 13 1836, reads: "One of the most lovely days I ever beheld. T.B.C. and I walked to the country house. The garden looked like summer, we gathered herbs and oranges and after resting under a tree had a delightful walk home."

Another entry for May 15, 1836 reads: "The first thing we heard this morning was that the Medea Steamer had arrived with the King of Greece on board, a parade was ordered at half past ten and instead of church a grand review. We went to get a look at his majesty who is a fine looking young man. The king's aide wore a most splendid dress, T.B.C. was introduced to him."

Ms Stovell said that reading Mrs. Carter's journal gave her an intimate glance into what life was like in the Royal Navy.

"These are logbooks, but the writers personalised everything they went through," said Ms Stovell. "The writer of this logbook was trying to capture the moment for herself. She probably didn't realise that the book would be on display at some time."

Ms Stovell spent almost a month researching the Carter logbook.

"I came in here everyday and focused on reading this," she said. "I never found her name in the journal. She mentions friends but only by their first name. I don't know if she had any children. At every port she would send letters home to England, and sometimes she would express sadness when she would get a letter back saying a friend had experienced an untimely death. In the journal she even wrote a melancholy poem."

Although historic documents are sometimes difficult to decipher, Ms Stovell said this wasn't the case for Mrs. Carter's journal, because her penmanship was impeccable.

"At the end she writes that she never dreamed she would finish the journal in Corfu," said Ms Stovell. "There was no indication that she came to Bermuda, although I looked."

The other logbooks in the show are more official and belong to naval officers spanning the 1820s to 1930. Mrs. Carter's journal is also the only one without any specific connection to Bermuda.

"We specifically chose to focus on the Royal Navy logbooks and journals, just because we had a good collection and we wanted to focus the theme of it," said museum curator Rosemary Jones. Senior officers in the navy were required to keep logbooks, that would be periodically checked.

"They tend to be very distinctive in their accuracy because these logbooks were typically used as part of their career advancement," said Ms Jones. "Those would go to the admiralty at the end of the voyage or after a certain period of time. The books would be used to judge if the officer was ready to move up to a higher rank."

Many of the logbooks contain highly detailed drawings of ship machinery, maps of the area where the ship was docked and sketches of other ships in the harbour.

This was done because the Royal Navy stressed the importance of the power of observation.

"I don't know if they always told the truth, but it appears so," said Ms Jones. "There is so much detail, and a lot of it is official stuff. There is a lot of day to day recording of things like wind direction and longitude, but there is also a lot of description of unusual events and things that happened to particular members of crew such as sicknesses and punishments. At one time, an average of 5,000 men died every year in the Royal Navy.

"Punishments would have been lashings, usually. If there was a period of battle in wartime there was always the risk of death that way, or disease or onboard accident."

Ms Jones said the logbooks made for fascinating reading.

It was actually the 1932 logbook of thethat sparked the idea for the show.

"It is really one of the more impressive ones," said Ms Jones. "It was just acquired earlier this year. The logbook was written by C. E. A. Buckle who served between January 6, 1931 and December 8, 1933."

Midshipman Buckle described visiting various sites in Bermuda such as Crystal Caves, and Beebe's bathysphere, and a failed attempt to open the ship to the public during a wind storm.

This part of the show also includes pictures of the Denae, postcards, a watercolour of the Monarch of Bermuda, and maps of Dockyard drawn by Mr. Buckle.

"We have got the logs together and we were also able to pull images from our own collection that tied into boats that were referred to," said Ms Jones.

In one logbook a sailor describes a cholera epidemic experienced by Bermuda. When his ship docked "Hamilton was like a ghost town".

"We tried to focus on their Bermuda visits, but some of the logbooks describe interesting things that happened in other places," said Ms Jones.

The logbooks themselves would have been purchased by the sailors when they arrived in port. The books were usually put in canvas or sailcloth to preserve them from the elements. The sailor's initials would be embossed on the front cover.

"Some of them have seeped candle wax on them," said Ms Jones. "Others have salt. You can see that they are working documents."

The exhibit will be at the Commissioner's House at the Bermuda Maritime Museum for the next six months.

"I hope that people will come to see them," said Ms Stovell. "These logbooks are rare and this is a nice opportunity."