Captain Thomas Chatfield


Captain Thomas Chatfield

Originally uploaded by dchurbuck.

At home in Cotuit, here is the man in all his glory. According to the handwritten note on the back of the picture, this was taken in 1910, twelve years before his death.

I’ve scanned and uploaded a good number of photos into my Flickr account. Now the project moves onto the second phase of correcting the scanned war letters. When that is done I will need to decide how to treat the letters vis a vis the Reminiscences and whether to annotate the narrative with the details found in the epistolary account, or keep them separate and standalone.

Then I’ll move everything to Blurb, mock up the book itself, import the high res scans and finish the facsimile portion of the project before moving onto the primary research with the ship’s logs to determine the path of his voyages. That research will lead me to a Google Map tour, more contextual research (I want to learn more about the Gold Rush and Civil War is particular, having studied the whale fishery extensively in college.)

Then, when all the contextual research is finished, time to think about the book and getting it published. This is a very rewarding project personally and the antidote to a career obsessed with internet marketing.

There is a “Chatfield” photo set on my Flickr account to be found here.

Author: David Churbuck

Cape Codder with an itch to write

0 thoughts on “Captain Thomas Chatfield”

  1. I have enjoyed your website. I believe we have a common ancester. My grgrandmother was Mary Chatfield from Orange County NY. I don’t know for sure who her father was, but presumably one of the Chatfield “boys”. She married Charles Sheerer and then a man named Moulton. In any case, if you have any info on Mary, I would be happy to receive it.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: