Thanks to Stephan Gmelin 1

Actually this first in this series started here.   The ship is SS California, launched in April  1923.  If you look at the top photo in the link in the previous sentence, you’ll see this SS California started with three funnels, although it’s likely that two of the three were dummies.  Extra “dummy” funnels were “style enhancements,” added for appearance.  Notice the Lipton Tea building along the water in Hoboken?  The photo was cropped as shown.  Anyone help identify the tugboat company?

As I mentioned in the September post linked above, I bought an album of prints at an antique shop in Oswego NY on one of my stops there this summer.  We were spending extra time there to replace a prop dinged on an immovable uncharted underwater obstruction.   Thanks to William Lafferty, I’ve learned that Mr. Gmelin “was a Cranford, New Jersey, based amateur photographer and maritime historian. He was one of the earliest members of the Steamship Historical Society of America and an occasional contributor to its journal, Steamboat Bill [now called Power Ships]. He died in 2001 at the age of eighty-eight.”  Click here and scroll for a photo of Mr. Gmelin, whose full name including the first name spelling I used above was stamped on the back of most of the photos.

Click here for SHSA’s online gallery.