Samuel's travel journals
What are Samuel’s ship logs?
This is a collection of Samuel’s journals that he wrote during his travels around the Ocean, searching for Floaty Islands. In them, he recorded everything he could, and described his adventures in very great detail. He described the weather, the new discoveries or important events, the meals the crew ate, and all of the stupid jokes they told each other. As grateful as we are today that Samuel kept such detailed descriptions of his journeys, honestly a lot of it could be skipped over. You have to remember that a lot of the time they weren’t actually making any progress and they spent days, if not weeks, just floating around the Ocean, hoping to come across a floaty island. This could take its toll on the crew’s mood which was very obvious in some of Samuels writings. On some days his notes were very well organized, but on other days the notes were nothing more than delirious incoherent ramblings. As the time goes on, the adventures become stranger and more outlandish, quite unbelievable actually. Samuel and his crew swore until their deaths that all of it was real, but many still today doubt the legitimacy of some of the stories written in there.
How many are there?
Samuel kept these journals on all of his adventures, and so each adventure has its own journal related to it. Exactly 97 of these are still stored in the archives of the Museum of Oceanic Oddities located in Samuel’s hometown, but it’s unknown if there are any more out there and if they could be found.
All of the content was carefully examined by professionals, and the most interesting and important parts were written out and published in a series of ten books. These books skip over all of the uneventful days, unsuccessful missions and the incoherent ramblings, and focus more on the actual discoveries the crew made.
The full .pdf files of the original journals have been uploaded and made available for everyone to read as well.
Importance Today
By now, many more explorers have visited the Floaty Islands and came up with more information and resources gathered at those islands. With the help of these researchers that came after Samuel, we were able to find out a lot more about these islands than Samuel and his crew ever could. Nevertheless, Samuel’s journals are still considered one of the most important documents regarding the research of Floaty Islands. After all, Samuel was the one who started it all - without him there would be no other explorers who were encouraged to sail out after seeing his success. These are also still the most detailed journals that don’t leave out anything. Together with other explorers’ journals they provide a good description of where and when certain Floaty Islands are more likely to be found.
The tales of Samuel’s adventures are still taught in schools, and he is celebrated as one of the most important adventurers of our world. Each school should have the 10-book collection of his journals in their library for students to read.
The credibility of the stories
Many of the floaty islands have been discovered later by other explorers and if we compare all of their stories, there is no reason to doubt Samuel’s writings. But it’s important to note that the 10th book of the collection is dedicated specifically to the more outlandish stories from Samuel’s journals.
In these he writes about all sorts of strange discoveries, from epic battle with Creepy Hands, to encountering mermaids and of course, the strange fantastical island of Burb-Gol. Here Samuel goes into some detail about a white-haired and black-eyes woman appearing in his Dreams, telling him that the next day he’d find an island called Burb-Gol. She is the guardian of this island and she would kill him, his crew and destroy his ship if he dared to take anything from her island. This very conveniently explains why Samuel and his crew were unable to present any plant, photo, or any kind of evidence of this island being real.
One thing you have to understand when it comes to these stories is that they become more frequent in Samuel’s later journals. By now, many other explorers would sail out to find Floaty Islands, and they all came back with their own journals and their own stories. To stay relevant and get attention, these explorers now tried to come up with the strangest and most unbelievable stories. Many journals from this era of exploration feature these stories that range from strange to absurd, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.
However, it’s stories like these that motivate new explorers to sail out to the Ocean and see for themselves how much of it is or isn’t real.
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