Steampunk Saturday - Attack by Airship!

If the commander of the air-ship desires to make his heaviest attack upon a steamship, he will turn the head of his ship earthward and glide just as does a volplaning aeroplane.

An image from the June, 1913 issue of Everybody's Magazine depicting an airship descending on a steamship for an attack in the style of Fritz Lang. Add a bit of Victoriana and you've got a steampunk scene worthy of H. G. Wells. A couple words in the caption stick out to me. Firstly "volplaning" and then the archaic spelling of "aeroplane".

At the time of this article, volplane would have drawn the derision of word-snobs in the same way their modern progeny shudder at trendy words of our era. It is an anglicized version of the French vol plané which translates to "gliding flight". A description of the movement of an airship in an era when airships were so new as not to have language to describe their behavior. Evidence of this comes from the fact that the first usage cited by Merriam-Webster was in 1909, just four years before this article ran.

Likewise, aeroplane is an archaic form of the modern English "airplane". It is an anglicized version of the French aéroplane. Its first cited usage was much earlier, in 1873. That makes perfect sense, you don't need words to describe the behavior of something that hasn't been invented yet!

The Great White Fleet and the United Fruit Company Steamship Service

Today as part of our Summer Vacation series we embark on the Great White Fleet of the United Fruit Company Steamship Line. "What's this?" you ask. "A Fruit Company running a fleet of ocean liners?" Your confusion is forgivable, but United Fruit Company isn't just known for introducing Americans to the saucy Ms. Chiquita Banana. They traded in tropical fruit, political dissonance that still plagues Central America today, and first-class holidays for Anglo wasps who wanted to see the Caribbean.

United Fruit was formed in 1899 when Minor C. Keith merged his banana trading company with Andrew W. Preston's Boston Fruit Company. The company controlled vast plantations and transportation networks in Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, and the West Indies (regions that would become known as Banana Republics due to the importance of their one commodity, the Cavendish). United Fruit would continue its exploitation and neocolonialistic interference in the countries where it operated until 1970 when it merged with Eli M. Black's AMK, becoming United Brands Company (though I doubt this made the company any fairer to those it historically exploited). But I digress from the point of this post, the enjoyment of warm, tropical breezes and fresh sea air!

United Fruit Lines' Great White Fleet was a fleet of cargo ships which transported bananas and other tropical fruits from the company's South and Central American plantations and ports to the United States. The name harkens back to 1907 and President Teddy Roosevelt's  fleet of touring warships. Teddy's ships bore a fresh, white paint job instead of the customary gray, becoming known as the Great White Fleet. United Fruit Company borrowed the idea, supposedly painting their ships white to reflect the tropical sunlight and allow banana temperatures to be more easily maintained, but just as likely reminding would-be rebels of Teddy's "big stick".

At some point, United Fruit added a luxury passenger service to their ship line. Probably to help defray the cost of sending empty ships south. The ad comes from a July 1914 issue of Life Magazine. It's a little unimaginative, the typical jazz age couple at the railing staring out on the bounding main. It took me three viewings before I caught the second steamship on the horizon. Personally, I like to think that the guy with his hands folded behind his back is a spy, heading for a meeting with his handler on the fore deck. At dinner someone will ask, "Say, what happened to that fellow with the pencil mustache? Wasn't he seated at our table?" To which the gentleman with the baritone voice and German accent will answer, "I believe the gentleman you speak of disembarked in Santa Marta, Frau Smith. Disreputable fellow, I'm sure the remainder of the journey will be much pleasanter without him. Care for more champagne?"

Quaint 16th Century Islands

Summer vacation season has arrived again, bringing with it warm tropical breezes, long lazy days, and the urge to wander. Since I spend a lot of time looking at the past, I figured this would be a good time to peruse the exotic travel offerings our grandparents and great grandparents might have considered when planning their summer holiday.

I'm kicking things off with a 1920 ad from Travel Magazine. Bermuda had been a British colony since 1609 and in 1920 celebrated the tercentenary of Bermudan parliamentary government. That year also marked the first royal visit to the island when Albert Edwards, Prince of Wales and soon to become King Edward VIII arrived aboard the HMS Renown where he was a serving Royal Navy officer. Prince Edward's official duties during the trip included opening the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, visiting St. Geroge's Island where he was principle guest in celebrations marking the 300th anniversary of the Bermudan State House as well as the completion of St. Peter's Church, and officially opening Somers Gardens.

That same year the UK-based Furness Withy shipping company began investing in Bermuda by taking over the Quebec Steamship Company and renaming it the Furness Bermuda Line. Furness Bermuda ran a three week service, bringing mail, freight, and passengers to the island from New York. Bermuda had a major attraction for American tourists - alcohol. The drought that was prohibition settled over American on January 29, 1920 and would remain in place until December 5, 1933 and during this thirteen-year period American tourists sought the warm waters and cool drinks of the Caribbean as a remedy to their moralistic problem. Furness Withy made the best of the prohibition era, investing in Bermudian holiday facilities such as the Mid Ocean Golf Club, the St. George, Bermudian and Castle Harbor hotels, and two tenders to ferry passengers from ship to hotel.

During the 20's Furness's Bermuda Line consisted of three ships: the Victoria, the St. George, and the Forts Hamilton and the ad featured here focuses on this last ship. It took some digging to unravel the fate of the Forts Hamilton and this is largely due to Furness' poor advertising. In 1923 the Hamilton still appeared on the covers of Furness' sailings brochures, but she no longer was a part of the line's fleet. In 1921 Furness sold her to the Bermuda and West Indies Steamship Company and this began her slow decline. She was sold again in 1926, 1930, 1931, and finally in 1932. In 1933 she was laid up in Trieste Italy where she was was eventually sold for scrap and broke up. Strange to think that the steel which went into building a pleasure vessel for British and American tourists probably went into the war effort which would kill so many of their children.

Let's not leave on that somber note, though. After all, this is a post about vacationing not the cruel ironies of history. So, I'll close with a couple home movies of Bermuda gleaned from the YouTube archives. Note the guy holding up the bottle of booze in the first clip. Spitting in the eye of prohibition, I like his style!

The MS Oslofjiord

Any of you who belong to a lodge probably recognize this sort of ad. It ran in the September 1938 issue of Rotary International. Two years later the Rotarians cruised from New York to Rio de Janeiro for the Rotary International Convention.

The Oslofjord was built by A/G Weser Shipbuilders, Bremen Germany for Norwegian America Line. She would strike a mine little more than a year after the Rotarians' convention and sink on January 21st/22nd, 1941.

The Sunshine Belt to the Orient

With the bleak weather of winter bringing the first cold rains to town this week and the remnant of a heck of a cold still playing havoc with my system, I thought I'd kick off a new winter enterprise. The winter months have always been the favorite time to head for the tropics or, if nothing else, at least get out of town for a bit of rest and relaxation so I thought this year I'd air a few travel ads. The sort of stuff a fellow without means, a real George Bailey, would hang on the walls of his drafty house to take his mind off the leaky roof, old windows, and pressures of his job. So here we go, whirl-wind tripping around the world with nothing but a trunk and a dream as our passport.

We start off on the Sunshine Belt Route from aboard one of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steamers. Pacific Mail was founded in 1848 by a group of New York business men who had won a contract to transport mail from Panama to California from the US government. The California gold rush ushered in an era of profitability for the company and Pacific Mail played a key role in the growth of San Francisco.

In 1867 Pacific Mail began the country's first trans-Pacific steamship service between San Francisco, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and Shanghai. In 1925 Robert Dollar of the Dollar Steamship Company purchased Pacific Mail and, after Dollar was bailed out by the US government in 1938 the line became little more than an entity on paper. In 1949, after little more than a century of service, Pacific Mail Steamship Company went out of existence.

 I can't help hearing the sound of a steam whistle and envisioning black smoke curling from the stacks as the ship departs the quay and makes for open water when I see this ad. I see myself at the rail, staring out at the hills of San Francisco fading into the distance as the side-wheel churns. Ahead the mysteries of Japan or China await, behind lies an old life that'll be slowly forgotten, erased just like the fog erases the city. The gulls cry and I turn toward my cabin, leaving my memories to the Pacific's depths.

1901 - The Hotel Tampa Bay

It's probably obvious that I've been combing through the archives of Life magazine lately. I know I've aired a lot of comic and advertising material from the 20's issues of the magazine in recent weeks, and I have to say the trend is likely to continue for a while. I have an admitted fascination with the early 20th century and I've been indulging it of late. So I hope you'll forgive my continuing the trend.

The Tampa Bay Hotel was built in 1891 by Henry Bradley Plant as the crown jewel in his Tampa transportation empire. The railroad was the fulcrum of Tampa business, connecting the city's downtown with Port Tampa where passengers could embark on a Plant Line steamship to Mobile, Jamaica, Cuba, or Bermuda. Having invested $2,500,000 to build and $500,000 to furnish his opulent resort-palace, Plant went all in to make the Tampa Bay Hotel a success.

Visitors disembarked from their trains directly into the hotel lobby, having traveled a special railroad spur Plant had built specially for the purpose. Once inside, those staying at the Tampa Bay were treated to luxury previously unknown in the Tampa area. The hotel offered suites of 3 to 7 rooms most of which had private baths. Every room was provided with electricity and telephone, luxury items and novelties in the late 1800's. Tampa's first passenger and freight elevators transported guests and their luggage between the hotel's five floors. The furnishings were opulent, featuring Venetian-style mirrors, European sculptures, and furnishings so luxurious as to be described in the hotel's brochures as "a jewel casket into which has been gathered an infinite number of gems."

In an era before the 24-hour/365-day world we live in, the Tampa Bay Hotel's season ran from December to April  and guests were treated to balls, tea parties, and hotel-organized hunts. A guest could start the day with deep sea fishing, spend the afternoon playing a round of golf, listen to John Philip Sousa perform on the lawn, and after dinner attend a grand ball in the hotel's Music Room. The Tampa Bay Casino located on the hotel grounds served as a spa during the day and in the evenings, with its pool covered by a removable floor, transformed into a concert venue which seated up to two thousand people and featured performers such as Nellie Melba, Sara Bernhardt, and Anna Pavlova.

In 1933 the Tampa Bay Hotel became the home of the Henry B. Plant Museum and the University of Tampa and it remains open today for those lucky enough to have an opportunity to visit.

Death aboard the Seeandbee

Back in 1885 Morris A. Bradley established the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company (C&B). The company operated a popular steamship line from Cleveland, running passenger and freight service to Buffalo, NY aboard the liners State of Ohio and State of New York. With business booming, C&B added to its fleet, christening the City of Buffalo and eventually replacing the aging State of Ohio with the City of Erie which provided night service between Cleveland and Toledo.

C&B saw an opportunity in moving passengers and in the same year as the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage, the Seeandbee joined the fleet and began making regular trips between Cleveland and Buffalo. In her day the Seeandbee held the title of largest and mostly costly liner on the Great Lakes. She was 485 feet from stem to stern and could accommodate 1,500 passengers with 510 staterooms and parlors over four decks. She had an elegant ballroom in which passengers could partake of music and dancing while making the crossing.

The Seeandbee operated from 1913 to 1938, maintain her reputation as the lakes as its most famous liner until, like so many Americans, she was called to war. World War II saw many civilian ships converted for military purposes, and the Seeandbee was no exception. She was converted to operate as an aircraft carrier and rechristened the USS Wolverine. Under her new name she saw service training carrier pilots for shipboard landings and takeoffs. The USS Wolverine operated out of Chicago on Lake Michigan until the end of the war and was decommissioned and scrapped in 1946.

All of this is interesting – well, at least to someone like me who enjoys digging through dusty magazines – but it’s not why I found the little ad for cruises aboard the Seeandbee so intriguing. You see, the ad comes from a 1935 issue of The Rotarian Magazine, a call for business-folk across the Midwest to spend their hard-earned salaries on a little shipboard frivolity, but on August 12, 1940 when the ship docked in Cleveland one of its passengers wouldn’t be disembarking.

Mrs. Benjamin Mozee, a retired teacher from Nome, Alaska, boarded the Seeandbee on July 24^th and, according to her sister, had in her possession a large amount of money as well as three diamond rings none of which were found in her state room. On July 31^st the battered body of Mrs. Mozee washed up on the shore at Geneva-on-the-Lake and, adding insult to the injustice that had been done to her, since there wasn’t anyone who could identify the body, she was buried in an unmarked grave.

The money and jewelry weren’t the only things that had disappeared when the ship docked. Mrs. Mozee had been attended by a maid while on shipboard. The maid was a member of the Seeandbee’s crew and had tended to her during the voyage. Investigators found that the maid had disappeared immediately after the cruise.

When Mozee’s body was identified there could be little doubt she hadn’t simply fallen overboard and drown. The body showed signs of a beating and grease on Mrs. Mozee’s palms suggested she’d been in the crew area of the ship. An FBI investigation followed, but there is no record of there being an arrest, trial, or conviction associated with the murder.