Kaloderma

A European brand name with over 150 years experience in beauty and skin care

The name Kaloderma is derived from the Greek words kalos ‘beautiful‘ and derma‘skin‘

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Edwardian Bathing Suit

Image found in AdventuresOfTheBlackgang

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Brangwyn’s Railroad Posters

Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956) is perhaps best remembered for his murals. He also did easel paintings and posters, many of the latter in support of Britain’s effort in the Great War.

But that was not all. For a while in the 1920s he created a few posters for what became the London and North Eastern Railway, a major line that ran trains from London into Scotland along a route near the eastern coast of the island. (The London, Midland and Scottish followed a more westerly path north, while the Great Western and Southern railroads served other locations.)

At the time Brangwyn created the designs shown below, a trend toward simplified images was getting underway. Perhaps because Brangwyn was probably incapable of delivering a simplified image, his career in railroad poster making was comparatively brief.

Text and images from artcontrarian

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Imperial Airways – 1924 – 1939

Imperial Airways was the early British commercial long range air transport company, operating from 1924 to 1939 and serving parts of Europe but principally the British Empire routes to South Africa, India and the Far East, including Malaya and Hong Kong. There were local partnership companies; Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd) in Australia and TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Ltd) in New Zealand.

Imperial Airways was merged into the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) in 1939, which in turn merged with the British European Airways Corporation to form British Airways.

Background

The establishment of Imperial Airways occurred in the context of facilitating overseas settlement by making travel to and from the colonies quicker, and that flight would also speed up colonial government and trade that was until then dependent upon ships. The launch of the airline followed a burst of air route survey in the British Empire after the First World War, and after some experimental (and often dangerous) long-distance flying to the margins of Empire.

Empire services

Route proving

Between 16 November 1925 and 13 March 1926 Alan Cobham made an Imperial Airways’ route survey flight from the UK to Cape Town and back in the Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar–powered de Havilland DH.50J floatplane G-EBFO. The outward route was London– Paris– Marseille– Pisa– Taranto– Athens– Sollum– Cairo– Luxor– Assuan– Wadi- Halfa– Atbara– Khartoum– Malakal– Mongalla– Jinja– Kisumu– Tabora– Abercorn– Ndola– BrokenHill– Livingstone– Bulawayo– Pretoria– Johannesburg– Kimberley– Blomfontein– Cape Town. On his return Cobham was awarded the Air Force Cross for his services to aviation.

On 30 June 1926 Alan Cobham took off from the River Medway at Rochester in G-EBFO to make an Imperial Airways route survey for a service to Melbourne, arriving on 15 August. He left Melbourne on 29 August and, after completing 28,000 miles in 320 hours flying time over 78 days, he alighted on the Thames at Westminster on 1 October. Cobham was met by the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, and was subsequently knighted by HM King George V.

27 December 1926 Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.66 Hercules G-EBMX City of Delhi left Croydon for a survey flight to India. The flight reached Karachi on 6 January and Delhi on 8 January. The aircraft was named by Lady Irwin, wife of the Viceroy, on 10 January 1927. The return flight left on 1 February 1927 and arrived at Heliopolis, Cairo on 7 February. The flying time from Croydon to Delhi was 62 hours 27 minutes and Delhi to Heliopolis 32 hours 50 minutes.

Short Empire Flying Boats

In 1937 with the introduction of Short Empire flying boats built at Short Brothers, Imperial Airways could offer a through-service from Southampton to the Empire. The journey to the Cape was via Marseille, Rome, Brindisi, Athens, Alexandria, Khartoum, Port Bell, Kisumu and onwards by land-based craft to Nairobi, Mbeya and eventually Cape Town. Survey flights were also made across the Atlantic and to New Zealand. By mid-1937 Imperial had completed its thousandth service to the Empire. Starting in 1938 Empire flying boats also flew between Britain and Australia via India and the Middle East.

In March 1939 three Shorts a week left Southhampton for Australia, reaching Sydney after ten days of flying and nine overnight stops. Three more left for South Africa, taking six flying days to Durban.

Air Mail

Flown cover carried around the world on PAA Boeing 314 Clippers and Imperial Airways Short S23 flying boats 24 June-28 July 1939

In 1934 the Government began negotiations with Imperial Airways to establish a service (Empire Air Mail Scheme) to carry mail by air on routes served by the airline. Indirectly these negotiations led to the dismissal in 1936 of Sir Christopher Bullock, thePermanent Under-Secretary at the Air Ministry, who was found by a Board of Inquiry to have abused his position in seeking a position on the board of the company while these negotiations were in train. The Government, including the Prime Minister, regretted the decision to dismiss him, later finding that, in fact, no corruption was alleged and sought Bullock’s reinstatement which he declined.

The Empire Air Mail Programme began in July 1937, delivering anywhere for 1½ d./oz. By mid-1938 a hundred tons of mail had been delivered to India and a similar amount to Africa. In the same year, construction was started on the Empire Terminal in Victoria, London, designed by A. Lakeman and with a statue by Eric Broadbent, Speed Wings Over the World gracing the portal above the main entrance. From the terminal there were train connections to Imperial’s flying boats at Southampton and coaches to its landplane base at Croydon Airport. The terminal operated as recently as 1980.

To help promote use of the Air Mail service, in June and July 1939, Imperial Airways participated with Pan American Airways in providing a special “around the world” service; Imperial carried the souvenir mail from Foynes, Ireland, to Hong Kong, out of the eastbound New York to New York route.

Captain H.W.C. Alger and his wife

Pan American provided service from New York to Foynes (departing 24 June, via the first flight of Northern FAM 18) and Hong Kong to San Francisco (via FAM 14), and United Airlines carried it on the final leg from San Francisco to New York, arriving on 28 July. Captain H.W.C. Alger was the pilot for the inaugural air mail flight carrying mail from England to Australia for the first time on the Short Empire flying boat Castor for Imperial Airways’ Empires Air Routes, in 1937. Text from Wikipedia

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Women On Bikes

Madge Saunders and her husband, British comic actor Leslie Henson, 1920.

Sally Halterman, the first woman to be granted a license to operate a motorcycle in the District of Columbia, 1937.

An entrant in a ladies-only reliability trial in London, England, 1927.

Marjorie Cottle (second from left), a famous motorcyclist, and friends in Germany, 1920.

Three women riding motorbikes at the ACU Trials in Birmingham, England, 1923.

Nancy and Betty Debenham, well-known motorcyclists, riding BSA bikes with their dog, 1925.

Miss E. Foley and Miss L. Ball, entrants in the International Six Days Reliability Trials, at Brooklands race track in England, 1925.

Text and images from VintageEveryday

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BMW Type R32

The BMW R32 was the first motorcycle produced by BMW under the BMW name. An aircraft engine manufacturer during World War I, BMW was forced to diversify after the Treaty of Versailles banned the German air force and German aircraft manufacture. BMW initially turned to industrial engine design and manufacturing.

History

In 1919, BMW designed and manufactured the flat-twin M2B15 engine for Victoria Werke AG of Nuremberg. The engine was initially intended as a portable industrial engine, but found its main use in Victoria motorcycles. The engine was also used in the Helios motorcycle built by Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, which was later merged into BMW AG. Bayerische Flugzeugwerke also manufactured a small two-stroke engined motorcycle, called the Flink, which was not successful^.

After the merger, General Director of BMW Franz Josef Popp asked Design Director Max Friz to assess the Helios motorcycle. Upon completing his assessment, Friz suggested to Popp that the best thing that could be done with the Helios would be to dump it in the nearest lake. More specifically, Friz condemned the Douglas-style transverse-crankshaft layout, which heavily restricted the cooling of the rear cylinder.

Popp and Friz then agreed to a near-term solution of redesigning the Helios to make it more saleable and a long-term solution of an all new motorcycle design. This new design was designated the BMW R32 and began production in 1923, becoming the first motorcycle to be badged as a BMW.

The M2B33 engine in the R32 had a displacement of 494 cc and had a cast-iron sidevalve cylinder/head unit. The engine produced 8.5 hp (6.3 kW), which propelled the R32 to a top speed of 95 km/h (59 mph). The engine and gear box formed asingle unit. The new engine featured a recirculating wet sump oiling system at a time when most motorcycle manufacturers used a total-loss oiling system. BMW used this type of recirculating oiling system until 1969.

To counter the cooling problems encountered with the Helios, Friz oriented the R32’s M2B33 boxer engine with the cylinder heads projecting out on each side for cooling, as used in the earlier British-manufactured ABC. Unlike the ABC, however, the R32 used shaft final drive from a flexible coupling on the gearbox output shaft to a pinion driving a ring gear on the rear wheel hub.

The R32 had a tubular steel frame with twin downtubes that continued under the engine to the rear wheel. The front fork had a trailing link design suspended by a leaf spring, similar to the forks used by Indian at the time. The rear wheel was rigidly mounted. A drum brake was used on the front wheel, while a "dummy rim" brake was used on the rear wheel.

Legacy

The R32 established the boxer-twin, shaft-drive powertrain layout that BMW would use until the present. BMW used shaft drives in all of its motorcycles until the introduction of the F650 in 1994 and continues to use it on their boxer-twin motorcycles.

Text from Wikipedia

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Soda Bilz

I keep wondering, where has that bloke got his other hand – 😉

Image found on 20th Century Man

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A Sight For Sore Eyes

Gif found on SilkDiamonds&Pearls

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It Pays To Be A Scout Chief ;-)

Baden Powell’s Rolls Royce and Caravan from 1929.

The year 1929 was a special year for Scouting as it was to celebrate it’s 21st Birthday, it was also the year of the 3rd World Jamboree, which was going to be held at Arrowe Park, just outside Liverpool.

At the Jamboree to mark 21 years of Scouting Baden Powell was honoured with a number of gifts including a Baronetcy by King George V, Baden Powell took the title of Lord Baden Powell of Gilwell, other gifts included a set of Braces and from the 50.000 Scouts of the World attending, a very special gift of a Rolls Royce Car and a touring Caravan.

As a good scout master Baden Powell knew how to take care of things
so both the Rolls and the caravan is still around.

Text and image from The Scouting Pages

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Ethel Hays – American Syndicated Cartoonist

Ethel Hays (March 13, 1892 – March 19, 1989) was an American syndicated cartoonist specializing in flapper-themed comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s. She drew in Art Deco style. In the later part of her career, during the 1940s and 1950s, she became one of the country’s most accomplished children’s book illustrators.

Newspaper comics and illustrations

This experience with comic art changed the course of her career. Hays was subsequently offered work as a staff illustrator for the Cleveland Press, a job procured for her by the designer of the correspondence course himself, Charles N. Landon. Soon after, Landon would be touting Ethel Hays as among the "former students who are now successful comic strip artists" in his magazine ads of the 1920s.

Hays’ first work at the Cleveland Press was for a trendy feature called Vic and Ethel, which consisted of flapper-themed satire and social commentary—including stories of "steeple-climbing and swimming in ice-filled lakes" and interviews with visiting celebrities — accompanied by Hays’s cartoons. Her first comic strip for Newspaper Enterprise Association was derived from that feature and was called simply Ethel. Here Hays continued to chronicle the era when women "bobbed their hair and took up active sports." Even at the beginning of her career, Hays’ style was "already polished and breathtakingly lovely."

Hays also drew the noted one-panel cartoon series Flapper Fanny Says, also for NEA and starting in about 1924, with a Sunday page following in 1928.  In this panel, which featured a flapper illustration and a witticism, Hays "moved away from the fancy style of Nell Brinkley, drawing sleeker women with short hair—some even wearing pants." Her panel inspired competition for a time from Faith Burrows‘ similarly-themed Flapper Filosofy from the rival King Features Syndicate.

Ethel Hays was married in 1925 to W.C. Simms of Kansas City, Missouri (she continued to use her maiden name in signing her art throughout her career). By 1928 she was a mother. After she had her second child, she found the daily workload becoming too heavy, and she turned Flapper Fanny Says over to promising newcomer Gladys Parker around 1931. Between 1931 and 1936, however, Hays did find time to illustrate at least 17 stories by noted and prolific author Ellis Parker Butler that were distributed to newspapers. Hays continued to produce a variety of other work for NEA, including full-page illustrations and montages for Every Week magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement. Her final comic strip for NEA wasMarianne, beginning around February 1936, which ran weekly. Comic strip historian Allan Holtz wrote, "While the art was vintage Hays, the gags were strictly jokebook material. You could tell her heart was no longer in it." Her final installment ran on December 26, 1937, though the strip continued without her for another year or two.

Text from Wikipedia

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Lillian Leitzel – Acrobat And Strongwoman

Lillian Leitzel (Jan. 2, 1892 – 1931) was an acrobat and strongwoman for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. She was one of the highest paid performers of her generation and known for her mix of a fiery temperament and great personal charm. Lillian Leitzel was a circus diva of the highest regard. She ruled the rings as well as the back lot during the golden age of The Greatest Show On Earth^®.

Lillian Leitzel was born in Breslau, Germany on January 2, 1892. Leitzel’s parents separated when Leitzel was very young and she was raised by her grandparents. Christened Leopoldina Alitza Pelikan, Lillian Leitzel took her better-known name from the Americanization of "Alitze," her Germanic nickname meaning "Little Alice." She received a quality education including advanced training in music, dance and language skills. She was fluent in 5 languages. She studied the arts at conservatories in both Breslau and Berlin and excelled at the piano. Her instructors encouraged her and it was thought that she may one day pursue a career as a concert pianist. Leitzel, however, had very different ideas. In her private time, she constructed a trapeze bar for herself and taught herself the tricks she had seen her mother and aunts perform.

Leitzel’s mother and two aunts performed in an aerial act known as the Leamy Ladies. The Leamy Ladies trapeze act was famous throughout Europe. Leitzel begged her mother to let her perform and her visits with her mother eventually lead to her participation in the act.

Leitzel first came to the United States in 1908 as a member of the Leamy Ladies, appearing with the Barnum & Bailey show during the New York engagement that year. They returned in 1911 as a featured act with Barnum & Bailey. At the end of the 1911 season, the Leamy Ladies returned to Europe without Leitzel who remained in the United States working the vaudeville circuit. It was during this time that Leitzel honed and developed her solo Roman rings act which by then included the one-arm planges for which she is most famous. During the planges, Leitzel would separate her shoulder and throw her entire body over her shoulder again and again. It was not uncommon for Leitzel to do 100 revolutions during a performance. All the while, audiences would count out loud as Leitzel would flip over and over, "….96….97…98…99…100!" Leitzel’s record was an amazing 249 revolutions! Audiences loved her.

In November, 1914, while performing in South Bend, Indiana, a booking agent with Ringling Bros. Circus saw her act and offered her a contract on the spot. The 4 foot 9 inch, 95 pound Leitzel made her solo Big Top debut on April 17, 1915 at the Coliseum in Chicago. Leitzel was a Ring 2 headline performer from the outset where she remained throughout the rest of her life.

Leitzel was a featured performer with Ringling Bros. in 1915, 1916 and 1918, moving to the headline spot with Barnum & Bailey for the 1917 season. After the shows combined in 1919, Leitzel was considered the premier personality through 1930. Her astounding feats of strength and grueling endurance wowed Circus audiences everywhere.

Out of the spotlight, Leitzel was the first performer in history to command her own private Pullman car completely furnished with her own baby grand piano. Her quick temper was legendary. It was not uncommon to witness Leitzel cursing or slapping a roustabout who did not adjust her rigging exactly to her liking. Further, Leitzel was known to fly off the handle and fire and rehire her personal maid, Mabel Cummings several times a day. In sharp contrast, it was the same hot tempered prima donna who was known to the children on the show as "Auntie Leitzel" and who would hold birthday parties for her fellow performers in her private dressing tent.

She was courted by many men who showered her with expensive gifts. In 1920, Leitzel briefly married a Ringling executive by the name of Clyde Ingalls. They divorced just four years later. Shortly after the breakup, Leitzel found her one true love in another hot tempered circus performer, legendary trapeze flyer, Alfredo Codona. Codona had made a name for himself in his family’s small Mexican circus before becoming a top star with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey^®. Codona and Leitzel carried on a tumultuous romance plagued with jealousy, screaming matches and many, many breakups and reconciliations. Friends on the back lot said they were made for one another. The two were married on July 20, 1928 in Chicago — that is, once Leitzel finally showed up at the church. Leitzel kept Codona standing at the altar for a solid three hours awaiting her arrival. She made it clear who was in charge in her marriage.

Leitzel and Codona were tireless performers, even scheduling engagements during the Circus’ winter break. During one of these breaks, on February 13, 1931 Leitzel was performing at Valencia Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Codona at Winter Garden in Berlin. Shortly after midnight, Leitzel finished up her Roman rings presentation and ascended into the air to begin her infamous one-arm planges. On that night, the brass swivel on the rope crystallized and broke. She fell over 20 feet to a hard, concrete floor. She suffered a concussion and spinal injuries in the fall, but doctors were confident she’d recover. Codona rushed to her side. She insisted she was fine and urged Codona to return to Berlin to finish his engagement. She boarded a train with him and the pair headed back to Berlin when she died 2 days later at 2:09am, Sunday, February 15th.

Alfredo Codona was devastated by her death. He went on to remarry another aerialist named Vera Bruce, but their marriage was a miserable one. Distraught and unsettled, Codona became increasingly reckless in his act and finally suffered a bad fall as a result. Doctors informed Codona that the torn ligaments in his shoulder would prevent him from ever performing again and "grounded" him in 1937. The stress of Leitzel’s passing and the end of his circus career drove Codona to desperate measures. While discussing divorce proceedings in Vera Bruces attorney’s office, Codona asked if he could speak to his estranged wife in private. The attorney obliged and as the door closed behind the attorney, Codona pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and shot Vera Bruce before turning the gun on himself.

Leitzel is probably the first — and certainly one of the most enduring — circus luminaries of all time. Her celebrated life, tragic death and enduring legend haunts the circus world even today. She commanded top billing longer than any other circus performer in history and truly earned her position as Queen Of The Air.

Text from ringling.com

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And Now For a Little Stage Nostalgia

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Zeppelin Memories

On-board mocca set of airship Graf Zeppelin, 1928.
Heinrich & Co., Selb, Photo: © Porzellanikon.

The shown lounge is on the much-advanced Hindenburg. The Graf only had a combination dining room/lounge in the centre of her passenger gondola (decorated in 20s version of traditional style), as opposed to the generous spaces afforded by the in-hull built accommodations of the Hindenburg.

Graf Zeppelin over Capitol, 1928, the German airship on its visit to Washington. Unknown photographer. Source.

Images and text found on Design is fine. History is mine

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Round The World By Steam – 1920 – Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd

Founded in 1899 to carry cattle and cargo between Amsterdam and South America. The cattle trade ceased in 1903 when the British Government prohibited the import of live cattle due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Argentina and in 1906 the company started emigration voyages from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires with calls at Boulogne, Plymouth, Coruna, Lisbon, Las Palmas, Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Montevideo. Between 1917 and 1919 the company also made a few calls at New York. Passenger services ceased after 1935, but the company continued to run a cargo service to South America and is now incorporated in the NEDLLOYD group.

Text from TheShipList

Ship on the poster

SS ZEELANDIA

---

built by Alexander Stephen & Sons Glasgow,
Yard No 436

---

Port of Registry: Amsterdam
Propulsion: Steam – triple expansion – 14 knots
Launched: Tuesday, 26/04/1910
Built: 1910
Ship Type: Passenger Cargo Vessel
Tonnage: 7958 grt
Length: 440 feet
Breadth: 55 feet
Owner History:
Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd Amsterdam
Status: Scrapped – 1936
Remarks: Maiden voyage 21st July 1910
Amsterdam to South America
Requisitioned by the US Government in March 1918 returning to Dutch service in 1919
Laid up February 1935

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Vintage Auto Tourism

Family in auto tourist camp. Washington, D.C., or vicinity circa 1920. 

Rd. A.A. Foster and family of Dallas, Texas. Washington, D.C., or vicinity circa 1920.

Images found at vintageeveryday

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Round The World By Steam – Koninklinjke Paketvaaert- Maatschappij

Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) (Royal Packet Navigation Company) was a Dutch shipping company (1888–1966) in the Netherlands East Indies. It maintained the connections between the islands of Indonesia, and supported the unification of the Dutch colony economy as the Netherlands expanded its territory across the Indonesian archipelago. The company brought inter-island commerce through the capital, Batavia (now Jakarta) rather than to Singapore, which shifted economic activity to Java. With independence and establishment of Indonesia as a nation the company, after competing with the national Pelayaran Nasional Indonesia (National Indonesian Shipping) line and being taken over by trade union laborers on 3 December 1957, was faced with nationalization and moved its headquarters and international shipping assets to Singapore in 1958. From that base the company bought control of Maatschappij Zeetransport (Oranje Lijn) of Rotterdam entering a less than successful effort for the European-Canadian trade whereupon Oranje Lijn shares were sold and the company liquidated. KPM itself continued until January 1, 1967, when it merged with the Koninklijke Java China Paketvaart Lijnen (KJCPL) of Amsterdam. Crews and ships continued service with other lines until finally all former KPM elements were taken over by Nedlloyd in 1977.

Pre-World War II

The line’s routes, beyond the home islands, included services to the ports of Singapore and Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, Saigon; the Australian ports of Brisbane,Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide; African ports such as Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, Cape Town, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and the Indian Oceanports of Réunion and Mauritius and Mahé.

World War II

During the second world war with Japan their ships assisted the Dutch, British and Australian war ships with the protection of Singapore and during the battle of theJava sea with the supply of ammunition. In the Netherlands East Indies several of their ships were rented by the Royal Netherlands Navy to participate in the defence of the Netherlands East Indies and Singapore too against the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.

KPM ships were involved in the first months of the Pacific war in movement of supplies and troops. In January plans were made for the Aquitania to transport troops from Australia to Singapore until concern about putting such a large and valued transport loaded with 3,456 troops in range of Japanese air strikes resulted in a plan to transfer the troops to smaller vessels from Aquitania at Ratai Bay in the Sunda Strait. Aquitania and escort, the cruiser Canberra, sailed from Sydney on 10 January and reached Ratai Bay 20 January where the troops were distributed among the KPM vessels Both, Reijnst, Van der Lijn, Sloet van de Beele, Van Swoll, and Reaeland the British flagged ship Taishan. That convoy reached Singapore on 24 January.

Company ships reaching Australia during the Japanese advance through the islands were incorporated into the fleet being assembled by United States Forces in Australia (USFIA), shortly to be redesignated as U.S. Army Forces in Australia (USAFIA) and later the U.S. Army Services of Supply (USASOS), for support of the defense of Australia and campaign against the Japanese in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA). In early 1942 twenty-one small KPM vessels, loaded with refugees and limping into Australian ports, were obtained by charter for U.S. Army use and became known as the “KPM vessels” in the SWPA fleet. The means by which these vessels were brought under control of the SWPA command was complex and involved discussions with the Netherlands government officials in exile in both London and Washington as well as locally in Australia. Initially the original twenty-one vessels that reached Australia were chartered by the Chief Quartermaster, USAFIA on 26 March 1942 with long term details to be negotiated at higher levels.

The eventual decision, involving governments in London, Washington and the Combined Chiefs of Staff, was that the charters would be handled by the British Ministry of War Transport (BMWT) for the U. S. Army. The complex arrangement was a “bareboat charter to BMWT and through the War Shipping Administration (WSA) the ships were assigned by WSA to the Army but ‘not, repeat not, on bareboat but on gross basis,’ though under ‘full control’ of the Army.” In early March 1943 almost half the permanent local fleet was composed of the refugee KPM vessels:

On 6 March 1943, nearly 16 months after the beginning of the war, the permanent local fleet consisted of 43 vessels: the 21 KPM vessels obtained on 26 March 1942 and the 6 additional KPM vessels obtained on 19 January 1943; 3 vessels from the China Navigation Co. Ltd. (the Anhui, the Hanyang, and the Yochow); the Empire Hamble (ex Thepsatri Nawa. previously Admiral Senn), of Siamese registry, assigned 15 October 1942; the Admiral Halstead, the West Cactus (assigned 20 May 1942), and the Portmar (salvaged and reconditioned in 1942 by port-battalion troops), of U. S. registry; and 9 unnamed Liberty ships, which probably were in temporary service. The Coast Farmer had been sunk on 21 July 1942, and the Dona Nati had been withdrawn.

The twenty-one original vessels were: Balikpapan (1938), Bantam (1930), Bontekoe (1922), Both (1931), Cremer (1926), Generaal Verspijck (1928), Janssens (1935),Japara (1930), Karsik (1938), Khoen Hoea (1924) Maetsuycker (1936), ‘s Jacob (1907), Sibigo (1926), Stagen (1919), Swartenhondt (1924), Tasman(1921), Van den Bosch (1903), Van der Lijn (1928), Van Heemskerk (1909), Van Heutsz (1926) and Van Spilbergen (1908).

Two of the ships, Maetsuycker and Tasman, were converted to hospital ships to handle casualties in the New Guinea campaign. Both ships, though under United States Army control, were Dutch flagged and certified as hospital ships under the Hague Convention by the Netherlands Government in exile.

Post War

The company later merged into Nedlloyd, P&O Nedlloyd and finally Maersk.

The ship on the poster

SS Rumphius

SS Rumphius

Text from Wikipedia

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A Little 1920’s Typewriter Erotica

It didn’t take much the get a man excited back in them there days – Ted 😉

Images found at Retronaut

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Glüklice Reise

Ludwig Hohlwein, poster artwork for grammaphone shop, 1925. Featuring portable record player: Glüklice Reise – Bon Voyage – Happy Journey

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This Week’s Retro DIY Project – Monorail Bathing Chute

A splendid plan published in Modern Mechanix in July 1931  

Build This Monorail Bathing Chute for Thrills

As a thrill producer, it will be hard to beat this monorail bathing chute. Erected on a hill sloping down to a beach, it will send you flying out into the water at a breathtaking speed. Construction is very simple.

BATHING weather prompts many novel means of sport in the water such as diving slides, swings, etc., but here is a regular “shoot the chute” in simplified form with which loads of sport can be obtained and all at a minimum cost.

In laying out plans for the chute try and find a spot of land with a long gradual dip towards the bathing beach or swimming hole. Several hundred feet will furnish the greatest amount of fun, but it should have a hundred-foot stretch at least.

The track can be constructed entirely of ordinary hemlock or spruce boards six inches wide and 7/8 inches thick. The accompanying sketches show just how to put it together. Use short lengths of board laid end to end, the joints meeting over posts sunk into the ground at the proper height to give the track a nice even bearing to the slider.

Plans and description in jpg HERE

Found at: blog.modernmechanix.com

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This Week’s Favourite Female Singers – Those Lovely Dirty Old Blues & Jazz Pioneers

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