Ask pupils to write a log of their trip to school. Then look at logbooks and other sources, and ask them to write their own reconstruction of a captain’s log about voyages that took place in any period, from Ancient Egyptian times until the end of the Second World War.

KS3

Try to get to grips with Captain Cook’s handwriting in the National Archives Learning Curve Exhibition on the British Empire www.learningcurve.gov.ukempire g1cs4default.htm

KS4-5

What is evidence? To what extent were logs rational, value-free accounts of events? Did different captains apply different approaches to the way they recorded events? Students of the SHP GCSE might find the log valuable as a source of information about health and medicine. Captain Cook and other Royal Navy commanders were pioneers in sanitation and health.