Transcription of the Contract for Perseus & Unicorn 1776

[Thukydides]

As part of my research for the model of Perseus I am constructing, I transcribed the contract for Perseus and Unicorn. I am uploading it in case anyone else might find this useful.

If you previously downloaded this from MSW before the crash, there have been a few minor corrections and edits since then.

If you find any errors, please let me know so I can correct them.

EDIT: To better maintain version control I have decided to upload this document in only one place. You can find it here.

 

[ERSRich]

Remarkable document, thank you for posting.

 

[Thukydides]

Remarkable document, thank you for posting.

Your welcome. I have a whole bunch more primary sources related to the vessel in my monograph (including a colourful account by a French privateer taken by the Perseus), but that too (not my working version, but the last polished version I had released) was lost in the msw crash.

My current working version needs to be cleaned up before I can post a draft of it again. But I am working on it and hopefully will have a draft of the finished chapters and appendixes up that people can read soon.

 

[DAWarden-(Jaager)]

When I viewed the PDF I reflected on the tedium and frustration involved with reading and translating goose quill handwriting from 250 years ago - when spelling and punctuation far from standardized. It is relatively easy to start with a page or two, it takes remarkable determination to follow thru until the end.

Then I flashed back to my twenties and tried to imagine doing anything close to it with an IBM Selectric . ugh!

And then to my my youth and a Remington manual or worse a Royal portable. - no way. And any copies were the keys banging holes in a sheet of blue stencil paper and cranking a drum imparting a sweet smelling ink on special paper.

 

[Thukydides]

When I viewed the PDF I reflected on the tedium and frustration involved with reading and translating goose quill handwriting from 250 years ago - when spelling and punctuation far from standardized. It is relatively easy to start with a page or two, it takes remarkable determination to follow thru until the end.

When I did it, it was much harder than even now. Now all my transcriptions have the first pass done by AI then I go in and review and edit. At this point I have a good feel for the language so I can usually tell what should come next given the phases leading up to it and the AI I find gets it about 80-90% right saving lots of time.

This is particularly helpful when going through a whole bunch of documents looking for something. Every writer has a slightly different style and it can take me some time to adjust before I am able to read them well. AI lets me skim through documents at speed.