Just Yesterday
A Look Back Into the History of Boatbuilding | Soundings Online
It's a Consolidated
Such youthful optimism. A handsome, self-assured couple stands on the deck of a grand yacht and points off to what can only be a glorious future. The date is 1939, the scene Washington, D.C., where the socialites Emlen Knight Davies - daughter of America's then-ambassador to Belgium Joseph E. Davies - and her fiancé, Robert Grosjean, of the London office of General Foods, are spending the final days of their engagement.
A castle crumbles
It was what author Hal Burton termed a "whoopee cruise" in his book, "The Morro Castle" - a New York-to-Havana-and-back steamship ride for a few days of partying. It was a popular tonic against the worries of the Depression.
Slow, steady and stubborn
Compared to the clippers, fast packets and whalers, the bluff-bowed, slab-sided canal boat seems to plod unheralded through the Great Age of Sail.
But while those romantic sailing ships were plying the 19th century globe, the canal boat was doing yeoman's work at home, carrying much of America's heavy cargo to and fro in the burgeoning interior of the country.
Power to the people
Charlie Barr was winning the America's Cup with Columbia 111 years ago in this photograph, racing against a British "wholesale grocer" who'd come up the hard way to become Sir Thomas Lipton, one of the country's wealthiest men.
Lipton's 128-footer, Shamrock, was designed by William Fife for the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. Columbia, a 131-footer designed by Nathanael Herreshoff for the defending New York Yacht Club, was skippered by the soon-to-be-legendary Barr, who would go on to win three consecutive Cup regattas.
Steamboat Season
The steamboat was everywhere a century ago - a workhorse in the harbor, a freight carrier on the high seas, a passagemaker and explorer carrying civilization along on its journey of progress.
But it was also used for fun. Indeed, such is the case in this photo taken in the 1890s on the Thames River near New London, Conn.
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