Terror Comes to New York: The Wall Street Bombing of 1920

Few of us are likely to forget the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks, when two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan and into the Pentagon. I was a 14-year-old schoolboy at the time, and I remember watching it unfolding live on television.

But how many of us have heard of what happened on September 16th? Not September 16th 2001…but September 16th, 1920.

This date commemorates one of the first big terrorist attacks in United States history, a criminal act which has since drifted off into the fog of history. In this posting, we’ll be looking at the first time that terror came to New York: The Wall Street Bombing of 1920.

What was the Wall Street Bombing?

The Wall Street Bombing was just one of several terrorist attacks which took place in the USA in the early 20th century. Until the Bath School Disaster of 1927, it was also the most deadly terrorist bombing in the United States at the time, and the first terrorist attack on New York soil.

In the early 1920s, the United States was enjoying the coming boom years of the Roaring Twenties, brought on by post-WWI prosperity. Nowhere was this prosperity more evident than on Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, the center of the financial world. It was in this bustling nook of trade and commerce, that the attack happened, killing and injuring dozens of people during the midday rush, all in a matter of seconds.

What Happened during the Bombing?

These days, we’d probably call it an “improvised explosive device”, or to use the common parlance, a ‘car-bomb’; or more specifically, a ‘cart’ bomb. Just before noon on the morning of the 16th of September, 1920, a horse and cart, loaded with 100lbs of dynamite and 500lbs in sash-weights (those small, metal weights used to operate sash windows), pulled up outside No. 23 Wall Street, the J.P. Morgan Bank. A minute after midday the dynamite was detonated, destroying the cart, killing the horse, and sending hundreds of pounds of metal shrapnel flying through the crowded, lunchtime rush on Wall Street!

The bomb-blast could be felt right across the narrow thoroughfare. Its victims were mostly messengers, couriers, stenographers and stockbrokers, moving between their various places of work. The blast killed thirty-eight people and wounded over a hundred and forty other people! The exterior of the J.P. Morgan bank, which the cart was parked outside, was severely damaged by broken glass, chips of masonry and flying shrapnel.

Several other buildings on Wall Street were significantly damaged. Cars, trucks and other vehicles nearby were flipped over and smashed from the force of the exploding dynamite, as you can see in the photograph above. Within minutes, emergency services were on the scene to clear up the wreckage and treat the injured.

The injuries sustained in the blast were horrific. A stockbroker was decapitated by the flying debris, his headless body found in the street, a packet of work-papers and stocks still clutched in his hands. One man was blinded in the explosion and lost the use of his eyes. Dead bodies lay everywhere. Initially, the death-count was low, but the appalling injuries soon caused it to rise to the number of 38, which was the official number of deaths caused by the blast.

Some of the bodies of victims killed in the blast

The police were quick to respond to the explosion, and within minutes, they’d cordoned off the blast-area and had commandeered all operational motor-cars within the radius of the explosion, using them to transport the injured to hospital. One 17-year-old messenger-boy packed thirty people into one of these cars before driving it to safety.

The Aftermath of the Explosion

Terrified and furious New Yorkers were quick to condemn the blast that killed over three dozen people and horribly maimed and injured up to a hundred and forty or more of their friends, colleagues, family-members and just plain fellow New Yorkers. The BOI (that’s the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner to the current FBI) immediately launched an investigation into the attack. Business-owners and the Board of Governors for the New York Stock Exchange were anxious to start trading again as soon as possible. The street was cleaned up overnight (literally) and trading resumed the next morning.

The front page of the New York Times, September 17th, 1920. The day after the bombing.

Investigators theorised that the bombers might have been communists or anarchists. Why else would they wish to attack America’s centre of wealth, business and finance? The noted newspaper, the Washington Post, declared the bombing an “act of war”.

While the BOI theorised about possible foreign terrorist groups, or the possibility of a group of Italian anarchists, the police started investigating the source of the horse and cart. Despite checking dozens of stables, they were unable to find out who had purchased, or perhaps stolen, the horse and cart which was used to transport the dynamite to Wall Street. While investigative authorities came up with many theories and leads, officially, at least – the case was never definitively solved.

Never Heard of the Wall Street Bombing?

Don’t worry! Not many people have!

Check these out if you want to find out more…

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/wall-street-bombing-1920

https://www.britannica.com/event/Wall-Street-bombing-of-1920

 

The Long Way Back: The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper

Imagine this – It’s December! You’ve booked yourself an international flight to the Far East to enjoy a balmy, sandy Christmas in the sun! You board the plane and take off across the Pacific headed for Southeast Asia, and settle in for several hours of relaxation, conversation and sightseeing over the ocean.

Before you’ve even reached your destination – your entire world is turned upside-down! Reports come in over the radio that suddenly, the whole world is at war! You can’t fly back, you can’t go on ahead, you have no idea where the plane is even going to land, and you could be shot down at any minute!

This is the terrifying tale of the Pacific Clipper, one of the long-haul luxury passenger seaplanes operated by Pan-American Airways in the 1930s and 40s, and the record-breaking flight that it took around the world in December, 1941, as the South Pacific exploded into war beneath its wings.

What Was the Pacific Clipper?

Introduced in 1938, the Boeing 314 Clipper was, in the late 1930s, the most modern of commercial, long-haul passenger aircraft being sold around the world at the time. Only twelve were ever constructed. Nine went to Pan-American Airways, and the remaining three went to BOAC – the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

The Boeing 314 was a large aircraft for the day, but even it wasn’t able to cover the entire width of the Pacific Ocean in a single, uninterrupted flight. Instead, the accepted practice of the day was to “island-hop” around the world, providing long-distance travel to the paying public by flying from one airbase to another, completing long-haul flights in stages. It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t exactly glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t cheap!…But it beat the hell out of trying to cover the same distance by ocean liner!

PAA’s ‘California Clipper’ in 1940

The Pan-Am clippers came with most of the stuff that modern aircraft come with: Lavatories, seats that could convert to lie-flat beds, delicious food, and full steward service! However, they differed in many other ways:

First – journey-times were much longer. From California to Hawaii took up to 19 hours! Second – Passenger-volumes were much-reduced – The average pre-war Pan-Am clipper barely carried more than 70 passengers. Third – the Pan-Am clippers were all seaplanes, or “flying boats” – they had no landing-gear – instead, the planes took off and landed on flat bodies of water – large rivers, lakes, or along the coastline during calm weather.

Last but not least – tickets were expensive! A one-way flight from California to Hong Kong was $760 – around $14,000USD in modern prices!

Piloting a Pan-Am clipper was very different from flying a modern aircraft. Because the planes could only take off and land on water, pilots had to be extremely skilled, not only in flying, landing, taxiing and take-off – but they also had to know a lot more about weather, sea-conditions, how to spot a safe stretch of water, and how to read the windspeeds and directions accurately enough to know when, where and how to make a safe water-landing! These days, most pilots hope to only make one water-landing in their entire lives, if they ever have to – but for Pan-Am clipper pilots, it was literally a daily occurrence!

In an age when long-haul passenger-flights were limited and the industry was only, quite literally, getting off the ground – flying was far more dangerous than it is today. Engine-failures and emergency-landings happened much more frequently, and a full-service crew flew with the aircraft at all times to tackle all kinds of mechanical incidents that could happen during flight. The crew of the Boeing 314 Flying Boat was 11 in number: The captain, first officer, second officer, third officer, fourth officer, two flight-engineers, two radio-operators, the purser, and his assistant.

It was one of these fantastical flying machines – a Boeing 314 – which came to be known as the ‘Pacific Clipper’.

Pan-American Airways named all its early aircraft, just like how steamship-lines at the time named all their ships. And just like how shipping lines followed naming conventions (Cunard named all ships “-ia” – Carpathia, Lusitania, Muretania, Berengaria, etc, and White Star named all their ships “-ic” – Titanic, Olympic, Atlantic, etc), Pan-Am also followed similar conventions: All their aircraft were called “clippers”, a reference to clipper sailing ships, which were famed for their speed. The names were typically related to the plane’s assigned route.

There was the Atlantic Clipper, the China Clipper, the Caribbean Clipper, the Honolulu Clipper…and the subject of this posting: The Pacific Clipper.

The Farthest Flight of the Pacific Clipper

It is December 2nd, 1941. Off the coast of sunny San Francisco, the Pacific Clipper is preparing for a routine flight across the Pacific towards Auckland, New Zealand. There are twenty-three people on board: Twelve passengers, and eleven crew. The pilot is Capt. Robert Ford, a Pan-Am veteran, well-used to the rigors of long-haul passenger-aircraft flights.

With a range of 5,000 miles, the Pacific Clipper was never able to make the flight from California to New Zealand nonstop, and it was accepted that the plane would land several times during the trip to drop off and collect mail, passengers, food, drinks, trash, and most importantly – fuel! When Captain Ford fired up the engines and took to the skies, nobody on board could’ve imagined what lay ahead.

Pre-war Honolulu in the 1930s

The aircraft’s first stop was San Pedro, California, then out across the ocean. It landed in Honolulu, Hawaii, then Kanton Island near Kiribati, then Fiji, and then finally, New Caledonia. In the preceding days, it had covered over 6,000 miles! The final leg of the journey was still ahead: Auckland, a mere 1,200 miles away – well within the limits of the Pacific Clipper’s operational range.

As the plane took off from New Caledonia and flew southeast towards Auckland, wireless operator John Poindexter was relaxing at his station, his headphones strapped onto his head as the aircraft hummed around him. Right now, he was probably thinking about his wife – the same wife that he had advised, he would be home early for – and to keep dinner for him on the kitchen table.

That was before one of the two radio-operators on the flight pulled out sick, and Poindexter stepped in to replace him. Had he known what was about to happen, Poindexter would’ve told his wife not to bother about dinner, because he was going to be home late.

Very late.

Halfway through their current leg, the radio suddenly crackled to life, and Poindexter scribbled down a message in Morse Code. Ripping it off his pad, he hurried to tell the rest of the crew what had just come in over the airwaves.

It was December 7th, 1941. A date which would live in infamy. Poindexter had just found out about the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

As the pilot, his co-pilot, the stewards, navigator, flight engineers and radio-operators all looked at the message, they suddenly realised what a horrible position they were all in!

While they could safely make it to New Zealand, offload their passengers, cargo and mail, refuel and take-off again – it was immediately obvious that there was no way that they could ever go home…or at least…not in the conventional way.

Under normal circumstances, the plane would’ve flown northeast towards Hawaii, where it would land, refuel, and then continue on back to the mainland United States. With Japanese aircraft, warships and aircraft carriers between the South Pacific and Hawaii, however, such a route was impossible – an aircraft bearing American markings would almost certainly be shot out of the sky if it was discovered by Japanese surface vessels.

With Hawaii on high alert, landing and refueling there, even if they managed to evade the Japanese, would be next to impossible. Unable to make the journey back to California without at least one stopover, getting back home seemed impossible!

Landing in New Zealand

The first leg of this epic adventure was relatively easy – landing. Two hours after receiving the world-changing news that the naval base at Pearl Harbor had been blasted by the Japanese, Captain Ford and his crew executed a landing off the coast of New Zealand, taxiing up to Auckland and tying off. Passengers and cargo were offloaded and the plane was prepared for…well…they weren’t exactly sure what for…but they wanted to be prepared at the very least!

Unsure of what else to do, the crew made their way to the American Embassy in Auckland. Here, they managed to contact Pan-American Airways Headquarters…in New York…and waited for further instructions.

With facilities in Hawaii put out of action, the harbor inoperable and any aircraft-fuel being needed for military aircraft, flying back to California was all but impossible.

In the week that it took for headquarters to make up its mind on the crew’s next move, the Pacific was erupting into war around them. The Philippine Clipper at Wake Island had managed to evacuate all Pan-Am employees and a lucky few civilians, taking to the air as Japanese forces rolled in, riddling the aircraft with gunfire as it fought to get out of range. In Hong Kong, another Pan-Am flying boat had been blown up at its dock before it even had a chance to leave.

Knowing that time was running out and that their options were dwindling rapidly, it was eight days before Captain Ford and his crew found out what they were expected to do.

Finally, on the 15th of December, a cypher-telegram was dispatched from New York to the U.S. Embassy, Auckland, New Zealand. It instructed Captain Ford to strip the Pacific Clipper of all identifying marks, fuel-up, and to get home by whatever means were necessary. During the trip, radio silence was to be observed at all times, to prevent the aircraft from being detected by the Japanese, and to land in New York when it arrived back in American waters.

When he found out what he was expected to do, Captain Ford probably thought that it would’ve been better if he’d kept his mouth shut! There was no way the aircraft could fly that far without stopping several times for fuel. There was no way that they’d have enough food, equipment or supplies to last that long! They didn’t even have any money, and because Captain Ford only flew the Pacific routes – he had no maps or navigational charts to guide him across Eurasia, Africa, or the Atlantic Ocean! They were entirely on their own, with orders to make it home by any means necessary.

After refueling the aircraft, Ford and his passengers and crew took off once more, to an uncertain fate.

It was the 16th of December when they left New Zealand, and their first stop was one of their previous legs – New Caledonia. Here, Ford had been ordered to land, refuel, and take on evacuees – the staff of the Pan-Am facility that operated out of the New Caledonian capital – Noumea. Fearing that the island could be captured by the Japanese at any minute, Ford told the Pan-Am staff that they had exactly one hour to grab whatever they could, and flee. This wouldn’t be easy – each passenger was only allowed one bag each!

While the Pan-Am staff scrambled to pack their bags and secure their essentials, the plane was refueled. With everybody safely aboard, the plane took off once more, this time flying west.

The only other major landmass in the region that had not yet been taken by the Japanese was the Commonwealth of Australia – the Pacific Clipper’s next stop. It landed off the Queensland coast near the town of Gladstone, where once again – it started to refuel. While the ground-staff prepared the clipper for its next leg, the crew offloaded the Pan-Am employees from Noumea, judging Australia to be far enough away from Japanese aggression to be a safe evacuation-point.

While this was going on, Ford had to tackle another issue that hadn’t been an issue before last week!…money!

With each flight, the crew was provided with enough funds to cover their expenditures – food, fuel, and any necessary repairs – from California to New Zealand…but Pan-Am in New York had not been able to send them any extra funds for their long-haul flight around the world!

Wondering what to do, Captain Ford was suddenly approached by a young man, who identified himself as a local banker. The aircraft had enough food and fuel to last the trip – but what about money?

“We’re broke!” Ford recalled saying, and explained how they had only been given enough funds to support them there and back – not for halfway around the world!

“I’ll probably be shot for this”, the banker replied, but he went to his local branch, unlocked the vault in the back, and returned with $500 cash-money – American dollars! A not-inconsiderable sum in 1941!

Accepting the cash without another word, Ford handed it to Rod Brown, the aircraft’s navigator – the only person on board with access to the plane’s strongbox. The funds were deposited, and the aircraft prepared to take flight again.

Darwin in the 1930s. A sight like this would’ve been very similar to what the crew of the Pacific Clipper would’ve seen when they landed in the harbour on the 17th of December, 1941

The Pacific Clipper continued its journey westwards, flying across the Australian interior. Being a seaplane, the Pacific Clipper could only take off or land on water – and Australia being one of the driest countries on earth – there ain’t much water around! Certainly not enough to land a commercial aircraft in!

The afternoon of the 17th saw the Pacific Clipper landing in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. The weather was atrocious and the plane came down in the midst of a tropical thunderstorm. Although it was the capital of the Northern Territory, Darwin was hardly a bustling metropolis! The crew were stunned to discover just how small Darwin was – little more than a large, country town. Even in 2020, Darwin’s population is still barely 150,000 people!

Darwin in the 1930s.

Despite this, Darwin was still an important military base, with an airfield, army-base, aircraft facilities, and a naval base in the deep-water harbour nearby. Darwin was such an army town that the crew found that their refreshment station was actually the local brothel!

While in Darwin, Captain Ford and his navigator, Rod Brown, had to decide what on earth they were going to do next. Australia was likely to be the last friendly nation that they would be able to land in, before they had to strike out on their own and try and make it home across the rest of the world. There would be no way to know where they could land, find fuel, repair the engines if they malfunctioned, could receive medical care, or even communicate with Pan-Am headquarters in New York, if they had to!

Leaving Australia…

After freshening up, the crew had to refuel the aircraft…again. 5,000 gallons of aircraft fuel had to be poured into the tanks before they could take off – not with pumps or hoses or anything as sophisticated as that!…Oh no.

It had to be done by hand.

1,000 5gal. jerry-cans of fuel had to be literally manhandled up the side of the aircraft and poured into the tanks over the wings, passed down, refilled, and then passed back up again! All this in the raging North-Australian heat! It was past midnight before the job was done, and the crew were exhausted! They allowed themselves a few hours’ sleep, and then took off again the moment it was light.

Lifting off from Darwin on the morning of the 18th, Captain Ford and his crew flew north to Surabaya in Java, then part of the Dutch East Indies.

Desperate to hold the island by any means necessary, British and Dutch forces were understandably on-edge when they saw an unidentified aircraft entering Javan airspace. Unable to make radio-contact, the Pacific Clipper was almost taken out by friendly fire! When it finally was allowed to land – the local authorities refused to give them any aircraft fuel! They insisted that their limited stock was for military uses only – but – they didn’t want to be seen as being unsympathetic – there was a war on, after all!…and they graciously informed Captain Ford that he was welcome to help himself to as much gasoline as he could load onto the aircraft! It’s not like anybody was going for a relaxing, Sunday drive right now, so there was more than enough petrol to spare! Even enough to fuel a commercial airliner!

The lower-quality automobile fuel had never been used in an airplane before, and Ford was skeptical about whether it would even operate properly at high altitudes! But he had no choice – it was either take the lower-grade fuel – or run out of fuel entirely, and crash in the ocean!

Erring on the side of caution, Ford ordered his flight engineers to siphon the remaining aircraft fuel into one tank, and fill the other tanks with the lower-grade gasoline. The plane would take off using aircraft fuel, but would carry out the next leg of its journey using the automobile fuel.

Once the plane was airborne, Ford switched the feed-valves on the tanks, shutting off the aviation fuel and switching on the pumps for the lower-grade petrol – the engines gurgled and spluttered and smoke started pumping out, but once they’d gotten over the initial shock of the change in their diet – they started firing once more.

Chasing the Sunset

Determined to put as much space between himself and the Japanese as possible, Captain Ford steered the Pacific Clipper westwards, and out across the Indian Ocean, and over waters which were, quite literally – uncharted! With no detailed maps, Ford, his navigator, co-pilot and the aircraft’s stewards were basically flying blind, only having the vaguest idea of where they were going. Navigator Brown had no navigational documents for this part of the world, and warned Ford that all they had to go on were rough bearings.

Ford decided that their next logical destination had to be a colony of the British Empire – somewhere that the Pacific Clipper would stand a greater chance of a friendly reception. To that end, the plane attempted to find the island of Ceylon – today – Sri Lanka – off the Indian coast.

Had they been traveling by sea, this would’ve been called an “all-red route” – a sea voyage which stopped only in “red” parts of the map – red being the colour of the British Empire. As they flew on, the crew of the Pacific Clipper encountered heavy cloud-cover. Unable to determine his position, Ford dropped the plane below the clouds to get his bearings – a decision he would immediately regret!

As he broke cloud-cover, Ford got the shock of his life when a Japanese submarine appeared below! The Japanese started manning their deck-guns and began firing at the Pacific Clipper and Ford had to quickly manipulate the controls to bring the aircraft back up into the clouds!

Sustaining no damage from the Japanese attack, the Pacific Clipper finally landed in Ceylon and the crew were welcomed by the local British military garrison, where they were invited to a meeting to give them whatever intelligence they could regarding the current state of the South Pacific.

After the aircraft had been refueled, it took off once more. It was now the 24th of December – Christmas Eve, and Captain Ford was about to get a very nasty Christmas present! They had barely flown more than a handful of miles when an explosion in one of the starboard engines made everybody jump! Peering out the window, Ford and his co-pilot were stunned to see smoke and oil gurgling from the #3 engine! Ford shut the engine down and spun the plane around back to Ceylon!

When they landed, Ford pulled the engine coverings off and discovered that one of the 18 cylinders had ruptured and worked itself loose from its mounting, causing the oil to leak out. Repairing the loosened mounting was not difficult…but it did take a long time, and it was Boxing Day before the plane could take off again.

Deciding to stick with their “British-Empire” strategy, Ford and his crew headed for Karachi, then part of British India (today part of Pakistan), and from there to the Kingdom of Bahrain, at the time, a British protectorate.

So far, so good.

Arriving in Bahrain, the crew once again made contact with the British military authorities stationed there, explained their situation, and their onward plans. Captain Ford was warned to avoid flying over Saudi-Arabia if at all possible, due to the potentially hostile reception he might receive – more than a few British aircraft had been shot down over Arabian airspace, and while the Pacific Clipper had, by this time, been stripped of all its identifying marks to avoid enemy attention, there was still a good chance that an unmarked, un-identifiable aircraft might still be targeted by hostile forces.

The Pacific Clipper in flight

Captain Ford provisioned and refueled his plane, and they took off again. With fuel a precious commodity, Ford wasn’t in any position to take a ‘scenic route’ back to America, and so, ended up flying across Saudi-Arabia anyway! To protect against gunfire, the clipper remained in the clouds for the majority of the leg, only dipping down to check their bearings every few miles. They’d been in the air about 20 minutes when Ford took the plane down to check their progress. The crew got the shock of their lives when they realised that they were flying right across central Mecca! Fortunately, anti-aircraft installations did not exist in Mecca, and the Pacific Clipper flew on, unmolested.

The aircraft’s next stop was Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. Landing on the famous River Nile, Captain Ford and his crew were greeted by representatives of the British Royal Air Force, who helped them refuel the Pacific Clipper, provision it for the next leg of its epic journey, and wished them godspeed.

Exactly where to go next was a bit of a challenge. Flying to Europe was dangerous at best, unwise at worst. While they could probably head to somewhere like Gibraltar, Ford feared that the clipper’s engines, already taxed to breaking-point, would not survive the heat of the Sahara Desert – a forced landing there would be a death-sentence to everybody! This also meant that places like Casablanca, Spain or Portugal were out of range.

Instead, the crew decided to fly to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo – it would at least be further west, and would take them one step closer to home.

Landing on the river near Leopoldville, the plane was tied up at a jetty and the crew disembarked for their next rest-stop. Upon their arrival in town, they received the shock of their lives! Two Pan-Am employees – an airport manager, and a radio-operator – greeted them! Relieved to see colleagues again, the crew relaxed, had a meal, exchanged news…and thanks to the two Leopoldville employees – enjoyed something that none of the Pacific Clipper crew had had, probably since leaving Australia – a nice, cold beer!

The crew rested in Leopoldville overnight while they planned the next leg of their journey. They also refueled the aircraft and prepared it for the next day’s flying – in fact, they prepared it so well, that come dawn, the plane was almost too heavy to take off! With tanks full of fuel and oil, cargo and crew, and with the soggy, humid air of the equator all around them, the Pacific Clipper narrowly avoided plunging off the edge of a waterfall as it lurched ungainly into the air once more!

The Atlantic Crossing

The next leg was one of the most dangerous – flying across the Atlantic to South America – a journey that took them nearly all day and night! When they finally landed in Natal on the Brazilian coastline, port authorities insisted that the aircraft – by then looking very battered, worn-out and worse-for-wear, due to it serving as the home for the ten crew-members for the past month – had to be fumigated for mosquitoes, which could carry deadly yellow fever. The crew disembarked the plane and started planning the next part of their journey while a team of fumigators boarded the aircraft and got to work.

And boy, did they ever! When Captain Ford and his colleagues returned, the ‘fumigators’ had robbed them blind! Anything that wasn’t nailed down had been stripped off the aircraft! All their personal papers, most of their charts, maps, travel-documents, company papers, and most of their money had been stolen!…a fact they only discovered once they had already left Brazilian airspace!

Finally back in the Americas and in familiar skies once more, Captain Ford flew towards the Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad & Tobago. This was the first place they’d landed in since leaving New Caledonia a month before, that had actual Pan-Am facilities, and Ford was relieved to be among friendly faces once more. The next leg was the last one – the final flight home to New York!

Captain Ford and his colleagues were so eager to get home that they took off almost immediately. It was now the 5th of January, and New York was just a short jaunt away. They left Trinidad so early that when they arrived in New York, it wasn’t even daylight yet! As a result, when Captain Ford contacted La Guardia Airport Air-Traffic Control with the words: “This is the Pacific Clipper, inbound from Auckland, New Zealand! Overhead in five minutes!”, the air-traffic controller called back that the Pacific Clipper was not allowed to land!…for 50 minutes. Only when the sun rose near 7:00am, did the plane finally touch down in American waters once more!

The incredible journey of the Pacific Clipper

In the end, Captain Ford had made history! And in so many ways! Let’s count them, shall we?

The first-ever round-the-world flight by a commercial airliner.

The longest continuous flight made by a commercial airliner.

The first circumnavigation of the world by following the equator.

The longest nonstop flight in the entire history of Pan-American World Airways: 3,583 miles from Leopoldville to Natal.

In the nearly four weeks it took them to get home, Ford and his crew had visited twelve nations on five continents, and had made eighteen landings! They had also made incredible history!

The Pacific Clipper on its arrival at La Guardia Airport, New York. 6th of January, 1942

Want to read more?

Sources included…

The History Guy YouTube Channel.

The Pan-Am Historical Foundation website.

The Navy Times website.

 

Globetrotting – The Golden Age of Travel (Pt I)

In this posting, we’ll be looking at the birth of the ‘Golden Age of Travel’, and exploring how the changes and innovations made to transport and communications during the 19th century, gave birth to the first great age of travel and tourism. We’ll be looking at what tourism and travel was like when it first became available to ordinary people, how the tourist experience differed between then and now, and what we might have lost and gained during the journey.

The Golden Age of Travel’ is defined as the era from the second half of the 1800s up to the early 1940s, when cheap international travel and the tourist trade really started taking off, thanks to technological and transport advances made during the Industrial Revolution. It was an age of wonder and excitement, and was the first time that ordinary people were able to travel in style, speed, safety, and comfort. It was also the first time when people could travel strictly for pleasure at reasonable prices.

The Second World War, and the subsequent geographical, technological and political changes which it forced, irreversibly changed the tourist landscape, making the difference in the travel-experience between the first and second half of the 20th century almost as different as night and day.

The changes brought about by the War made it impossible to return to the elegance, excitement, wonder and grandeur of the pre-war travel experience – it’s something which exists only as a ghost, which lingers in old photographs, antique luggage, hotel and steamship-tickets and the stamp marks found in fading passports. So what was it really like? What was travel and tourism like before and after the War? How did pre-war travel differ from post-war travel, and how did post-war travel morph into what we know today? In this issue, we’ll find out together, on our very own tour through history!

So stamp your passport and clip your tickets. Strap down your trunks and hold onto your Baedekers. We’re about to take a trip back into history. Our ancestors may not have been jetsetters, but they were globetrotters, who still managed to explore the world in a haze of smoke, steam and gasoline. A flag waves, a whistle blows. It’s time now to depart! All aboard!

Before the Golden Age of Travel

For much of history, travel was slow, boring, painful, expensive and dangerous. People rarely travelled any great distance unless it was absolutely necessary, and almost never for pleasure. It was not uncommon for people to be born, live, and die all within the confines of the communities of their birth, or within a very few miles thereof. Travel meant days and weeks on the road. It meant needing money to pay for bed and board, it meant having to guard yourself against those who would wish you harm in any number of ways. Thieves and robbers on the public roads also meant that you were restricted in your travel, largely to daylight hours when it was easier to protect yourself. This limited your travel-time each day, and made travel even slower. And this if you were poor. If you were rich, travel was slightly easier, but still not without considerable risks.

Even if you had the money to allow for travels, and even if you did travel for pleasure, the journey was still slow, costly and potentially dangerous. Money had to be paid for coachmen, horses, carriages, food and lodgings, and servants. And there was the constant danger of being attacked during your journey. Travelling ‘in style’ told every highwayman along your route that you were rich, and that attacking and robbing you would likely gain a highwayman rich rewards for his efforts. This put you in just as much danger of assault and even death, as someone who had almost no money at all. And the manner of your travel did not change these odds at all.

For most people, travel meant walking. And walking was slow. Walking made you vulnerable. Walking along a country road, or through a town, city or village left you open to all manner of dangers – cutpurses, footpads, pickpockets, muggers, rapists, beggars, robbers and thieves who would all do their level best to relieve you of your worldly possessions. But for most people, this was the only way to travel from A to B – horses were expensive to keep, feed and maintain. And only the wealthy could afford carriages. And even those were not as safe as one might think.

Travelling in the relative speed and comfort of a private carriage or stagecoach did not guarantee you protection. Coaches or carriages which ran regular routes, and even private carriages running along busy Highways, risked being held up. Highwaymen created roadblocks to hold up coaches and force them to stop. Once a carriage was stopped, they could rob its passengers of their valuables and money, and even kill them if they wished. Famous highwaymen made names for themselves, like Dick Turpin, who was a notorious outlaw in Georgian-era England.

Before railroads, one of the fastest ways to move around was by mail-coach, which ran regular overland routes between major cities, delivering mail.

If you wanted protection on long journeys, you had to either bring your own weapons and know how to use them, or else pay for armed coach guards, who protected you with swords and loaded blunderbusses, or later, shotguns. To this day, sitting in the front passenger-seat of a motor-vehicle is still called “riding shotgun” – an allusion to the armed coach guard who would sit next to the driver of a stagecoach, to provide armed protection in the event of a holdup.

For all these reasons and more, for much of history, most people did not travel great distances. And if they did, it was rarely for pleasure, but mostly out of necessity – to escape disease, danger, poverty, a troubled home life, or to find employment or other business related reasons. What were the changes that happened in society and technology that allowed people – ordinary people – to travel for pleasure for the first time in their lives? And what was it like to travel and go on a vacation during this first great age of travel? What allowed this to happen?

The Birth of Mass Transport

Widespread travel for pleasure would not be possible without a corresponding development of means of cost-effective mass transport. Spurred on by the Industrial Revolution, the second half of the 19th century, saw efficient, cheap mass-transport becoming a reality, and for the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th century, efficient, cheap transport was symbolized by two great new inventions of the age: The steam-powered locomotive, and the steam-powered, ocean-going passenger-ship – the ocean liner! Where did these machines come from, and how did they change the world?

Steam Boats & Steam Trains

The two vehicles which would allow for the movement of large numbers of people with ease and economy were both invented in the early 1800s. By the start of the Victorian era, the first passenger ships and locomotives powered entirely by steam were plying trade around the world. Locomotives and steamships both originated in England, and it was this steam-powered transport technology that gave birth to the modern travel industry.

Conflicts during the 19th century such as the Crimean War, the Chinese Opium Wars, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s were the conflicts that laid the groundwork for the expansion and improvement of steam technology. Expansion of railroad networks caused by the need for rapid troop movements now allowed for swift, efficient movement of civilian passengers.

Advances in steamship technology for wartime uses now allowed for faster, safer and more comfortable ocean travel in peacetime. No more was it about sleeping in hammocks on rocky, creaky, cramped sailing ships that relied on the wind and weather. Now you could steam across the Atlantic or the Pacific in a berth, or a cabin of your own, in comfort and style, lulled to sleep by the throbbing of the powerful steam-pistons deep beneath the ship, that turned paddle-wheels, and later, screw-propellers, which drove great vessels across the ocean at speed.

No more was travelling by train a smoky, dusty, sooty experience, full of coughing and gasping for air in uncomfortable, windswept, open-topped carriages; now you could travel on a train with enclosed, corridor carriages with separate day-compartments, or if the journey was an overnight ride, in the relative comfort of a sleeper-car. If you found yourself hungry or thirsty, dining-cars and kitchen-cars provided you with food. If you wanted somewhere to relax, the lounge-car provided you with comfortable seating and bright lights to read, write, smoke, or chat with friends on the journey.

By the late 1800s, travel was safer, faster, cheaper and far more comfortable than lurching around inside a horse-drawn carriage with little suspension. It was also open to a wider range of people. You paid a ticket according to your means. First Class, Second Class, Third Class, or on ocean crossings – Steerage. ‘Steerage Class’ on ocean liners got its name from the fact that third-class passengers were often housed at the back of the ship, and deep in the hull, in the smallest cabins, the closest to the ship’s engines, power generators and steerage mechanisms. First- and Second-Class passengers got cabins on the upper decks, with the bright sea-views, away from the throb and rumble of the engines.

Motorised Transport

Along with steam-powered transport, the rise of cheap, personal and public motor-vehicles in the early 1900s also contributed to the Golden Age of Travel. Vehicles like motorcars, motorcycles and buses freed people from the restrictions of train and streetcar timetables, allowing them to make the best and most use of their free time. Planning trips and holidays around the country or continent became much easier and faster when each person or family had their own vehicle with which to travel in, which was not dependent on such variables as horses, timetables or weather, and which was much faster and more comfortable than previous methods of transport.

Cheap cars for the ordinary middle-class worker such as the Model T and Model A Fords in the United States, the Austin 7 in England, and the Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ in Germany meant that more people could go more places, and weekend drives to explore locations previously impractically far from home could now be accomplished in a few hours. Trips to the country or to other cities and towns were now easy and simple. And a car was easier to maintain and faster to start than a horse and carriage!

The Birth of the Golden Age of Travel

Along with steam-powered transport, the rise of more personal transport also contributed to the birth of the Golden Age of Travel. Starting in 1885, you had the world’s first modern bicycles, and increasingly as the Victorian era came to an end, the rise of the motorcar. Able to take people places that the railroads could not reach, these two inventions further improved people’s ability to travel and explore. This led to an increase and improvement of road networks.

Travelling around the country and going from city to city – road-trips – became popular. Rest stops, motels and diners popped up around the United States. The famous “Route 66” in the United States stretched from Chicago, Illinois all the way to Los Angeles, California, passing through many cities and states on the way, making it a popular road-trip and an easy way to visit many famous cities and towns along your tour of the American interior.

With the infrastructure for safe, speedy, comfortable and cost-effective mass transport now in place, and social changes such as the rise of the five-day working week, it was now possible for people to take time off, and time away from home and work, and to start travelling and go on holiday for the first time in history. The Golden Age of Travel had begun!

The Cunard Line advertising travel to all parts of the world! The ship illustrated in the poster is the RMS Aquitania.

Now, it was easy to travel to such places as the countryside, the beach, the bay, or to take day trips into town to go window shopping, to buy gifts, necessities for the house, or to explore cities and towns far from home. It was possible to live far from the city in a new, quiet suburb and commute into town. Journeys that might once have taken days or weeks could now be done in hours or minutes. The amount of free time available to people was beginning to grow. Holidays became popular, with more people getting time off work. People with time off work and money to spend wanted to go travelling, and the number of exciting destinations to visit was growing, catering to all levels of tourist, as were the ways to get there, and places to stay, once you arrived.

As the 20th century progressed, travel became faster still. With the opening of the Suez (1869) and Panama (1914) Canals, long detours around the horns of Africa and South America were eliminated for all but the largest of ships, slicing days off of voyages to Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the coastal cities of the United States.

The White Star Line advertising travel to the New World on its two most famous ocean liners, The Olympic and the Titanic, ca. 1911.

To lure people away from their homes to far flung destinations, travel agencies, railroad companies and shipping lines produced vivid, colourful posters advertising luxurious travel to the edges of the world in fast, sumptuously appointed ocean liners and railroad-carriages, fast connecting trains and short crossings; anything to part a potential traveler from his living-room, and the money from his wallet.

Steamships of all sizes now plied the oceans, seas and rivers of the world. No longer was sailing from England to the Continent (Europe) a dangerous, costly endeavor. Now, you could buy a ticket. You could get on a ferry and in steam-powered speed and comfort, take a trip across the English Channel to France. With rail-links around Europe, cities like Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Venice and Pompeii became great tourist attractions which were easily accessible thanks to efficient public transport services from the port cities of France, Denmark, Germany and Italy. People could travel all over Europe, America, and Asia, in speed, comfort and safety for the first time in history. All this was what contributed to the birth of the Golden Age of Travel.

Packing for a New Age

As the 19th century progressed into the 20th century, travel became cheaper still. After the hell of the First World War, the United States of America tightened its once open door policy on immigration. No longer were shiploads of poor European refugees allowed to be dumped on Ellis Island for large-scale processing. The ending of this policy in 1924, and the subsequent introduction of immigration quotas (which allowed only a set number of people from different countries or backgrounds to migrate each year to specific countries) meant that steamship companies, which had once made thousands of pounds and dollars a year in the immigrant trade, suddenly had their main passenger base swept out from under them!

In the new, optimistic age of the “Roaring” 1920s, a solution had to be found! The answer was ‘Tourist Class’. Ships no longer transported human cargo from A to B. They now transported fare-paying passengers, or ‘tourists’ in comfort, from their home ports to destinations far and wide around the world, for a reasonable price. Cheap tickets were snapped up by eager holidaymakers with free time on their hands, and international, ocean going travel began!

Travelling by ocean liner to cities and countries all over the world often meant long sea-voyages! Very long! London to Paris might take half a day by steamer and rail. London to New York might take a week or more. Melbourne to Singapore might take three or four days. But it was for the mammoth, long-haul voyages, such as those from Naples to Shanghai (eight weeks by steamer!) for which a whole new kind of luggage was required!

These days, we have check-in luggage and carry-on luggage, and it’s all weighed and measured and assessed and tagged. You can only have 10kg carry-on and 40kg check-in and if you want more you have to pay for more, and you have to repack, redistribute and reorganize everything over and over again, so that the plane doesn’t crash into the ocean and sometimes you wonder whether going on holiday is even worth it?

Packing for a long voyage during the Golden Age of Travel was just as challenging, although those challenges were of a rather different nature. One benefit of travelling by steamship was that there weren’t really any luggage weight restrictions. So long as it fit in the hold, or in your cabin or suite on board ship, you were fine. But even for short holidays, you often brought mountains of luggage. Remember that you did not go on ‘holiday’ or ‘vacation’, you went on ‘tour’ – hence ‘tourist’.

You expected to be away from home for days and weeks at a time – and that might be just the ocean voyage, before you even reached your destination! And having spent days and weeks at sea, you weren’t going to spend just a couple of weeks at your destination and then sail for days and weeks, all the way back home again! You expected to be away for a long, long time. A month or more, at least! So the kind of luggage that our grandparents and great-grandparents brought with them on their epic journeys was significantly different from what we would pack and carry today. So, exactly what kind of luggage would you expect to bring on a long ocean voyage?

The Steamer Trunk

The mainstay of luggage for most of the 20th century, and indeed, for most of history, was the trunk – large, wooden boxes into which everything you might require for a long voyage was packed. Considering that an ocean voyage to any destination could take anywhere from a few days to a few months, such large personal storage space was deemed necessary to fit in all the clothing, accessories and other related travel paraphernalia that might be required for a long time spent at sea.

Antique steamer trunk, complete with brass hardware and locks

Trunks were designed to be tough. They had to withstand being hoisted by cranes, roped up in nets, and being stacked up, lashed down, and rocked around at sea. They had to put up with rough train rides, carriage journeys, motor trips, being dragged around and shunted from place to place by porters, bellhops and stewards. To protect against damage, they were reinforced with wooden ribs and braces. This was to prevent cracking and warping from the weight of extra luggage stacked on top.

Rivets and studs were hammered into corners and joints to strengthen them. Exposed wooden parts of trunks were varnished to prevent wood-rot, or were lined on their exteriors with leather or canvas to provide a weatherproof finish. Corners were again reinforced with brass plates which were again, riveted on, to prevent damage from abrasion and rough handling. Catches, locks and clasps were made of brass. This made the trunks all pretty and attractive, but it also came with an added bonus – unlike steel, brass does not rust, so provided further protection against the moisture and corrosion of seawater.

The Suitcase

These days, most people pack their clothes and belongings into roll-on cabin-baggage when they go travelling. The days of the actual ‘suitcase’ are steadily disappearing. But there was a time when people who went on holiday carried suitcases, and these cases actually contained the suits which provided them with their names.

A typical suitcase of the Golden Age of Travel, from the late 1800s through the early 20th century was made of leather or canvas. It came with two lockable clasps to hold it shut, and depending on the style, may or may not have come with additional leather belts that were strapped over the suitcase. These belts provided a failsafe mechanism if the clasps were broken, but the belts (which wrapped around the entire suitcase) could also be removed from the belt loops around the suitcase and linked together. They could then be used to strap the suitcase on top of other suitcases or luggage, to keep them together, or to secure them to the roof or luggage-rack of a motorcar or horse-carriage during transport, if other storage space was not available.

The Gladstone Bag

Sturdy, of large capacity, secure and easy to carry, Gladstone bags were the backpacks of their day. Everyone who travelled anywhere on a regular basis was likely to have at least one of these, and like backpacks, the humble Gladstone was used to carry as wide a range of items as you could possibly imagine.

The Gladstone was invented by a London bag-maker in the 1800s and named after globetrotting British prime-minister William Ewart Gladstone. It was immediately popular because of its large capacity, and secure, gate-mouth opening. Reinforced with a metal frame, the bag could be opened, and remain open while it was packed. This made it ideal as an overnight-bag into which anything could be packed with haste.

Vintage leather gladstone bag

Once packed, the bag was closed, locked, and then simply carried away. No consideration had to be given to how the bag’s contents might shift upon movement, since it did not have to be tipped onto its side to grasp the handle, unlike a suitcase.

This was likely the reason why this style of bag was so popular with physicians, who commonly carried sharp, dangerous and breakable objects in their medical-kits, which were likely to be broken if they shifted unexpectedly inside a backpack or other type of luggage. The gate-mouth opening also meant that a doctor’s hands were free to dive in and out of the bag to retrieve whatever instruments and medicines might be required in an emergency, without having to constantly pull the bag open over and over again.

The Portmanteau

‘Portmanteau’ is a French loanword for a type of luggage which has all but disappeared from travel in the 21st century. You never see these things anymore unless they’re in museums or in period movies and TV-shows.

A Louis Vuitton portmanteau, or wardrobe trunk

Literally meaning “Coat-Carrier” (‘porte’ as in ‘portable’, and ‘manteau’ meaning ‘coat’), or also called a ‘wardrobe trunk’, this style of trunk was used for carrying your more expensive clothes – your best dresses, favourite suits, your dinner suit or your white tie and tails. It was stood on one end, and then opened up, looking for all intents and purposes, like a portable closet, complete with hanger-rack and separate drawers and compartments for shoes, shirts, trousers, socks, underwear and space for coats, trousers and jackets so that they wouldn’t get crushed during long journeys.

Portable Word-Processing – Vintage Style

Then, just as now, our globetrotting forebears often wished to keep some sort of record of their travels, or wished to inform others of their travels. Or had a need to communicate and write to others during their travels.

If we had to do this today, we’d bring along an iPad or a laptop computer and seek out the nearest establishment boasting free WIFI. And in their own way, our grandparents and great-grandparents had their own methods for keeping in touch and connected with others.

The Writing Slope

The reservoir pen which could be carried around in your pocket, and used anytime, anyplace, anywhere, at a second’s notice, is a relatively recent invention. If you went travelling any time before 1900 and you needed to write while away from your desk, chances are that you probably had one of these things packed in amongst your trunks, boxes and cases:

Antique writing-slope manufactured by Toulmin & Gale of London, ca. 1863

Writing-slopes were the laptop computers of their day. They carried everything that you required for on-the-move communications: Ink, pens, paper, stamps, sealing-wax, seals, spare nibs, matches, envelopes, pencils, paper-knife, eraser, paper-folder, and storage for money, letters, important documents and valuables. The writing box or writing-slope shown here is typical of the more expensive, up-market writing-slopes of the 1800s. It comes complete with desk accessories in elephant-tusk ivory, inset matchbox and inkwell, and an automatic deadlock security system (and the original key!).

Half-closing the writing-box exposes three, flat ivory panels, or an ‘Aide Memoir’. Here, simple notes and reminders could be scrawled on the ivory slates in graphite pencil. They could be erased using a moist cloth, and the ivory could be reused.

Writing boxes were common travelling companions of the educated globetrotter or travelling businessman of the 19th century. They died out at the turn of the century when they were replaced by fountain pens, and by yet another common piece of luggage which might be brought with you on a long voyage during the early 20th century.

The Portable Typewriter

Invented in the 1870s, early typewriters were bulky, heavy things. Weighing up to 15-20kg (about 30lbs+), they were impractical as portable writing machines. As travel increased towards the end of the 19th century, and as typewriters became better designed and more commonplace, a market was realized: Portable typewriters would surely prove popular with the travelling public, if only such a machine could be produced!

The first portable, laptop typewriters came out in the first decade of the 1900s, but their golden age started in the 1920s. Portable typewriters were manufactured by Remington, Royal, Underwood, Corona and countless other typewriter companies. They were snapped up by reporters, authors, journalists, travel writers and businessmen who often had to travel as part of their jobs, and needed to be able to correspond swiftly and neatly while on the road.

This Underwood Standard Portable from the second half of the 1920s was typical of the portable typewriters carried around the world by tourists and writers during the Golden Age of Travel. Newspaper reports, story drafts, letters home, business reports and magazine articles were all typed up on machines like this and sent home across the seas by untold thousands of writers, eager tourists, journalists and businessmen during the early 20th century.

Oddments and Accessories

Along with large pieces of luggage like suitcases, Gladstone bags, trunks and portmanteaus, our globetrotting predecessors also brought with them all manner of smaller boxes, bags and cases for holding almost everything you could imagine. Shoeshine kits, collar-boxes, handbags, hatboxes, stud-and-link boxes, and toiletry cases carrying everything from straight-razors to talcum-powder.

Such large amounts of such small luggage were often packed inside trunks and suitcases, to separate and organize one’s belongings on long trips, but also to keep the items most commonly used closer to hand. Until the 1930s, men’s shirts came in general ‘one-size fits all’ style with longer sleeves, and without attached collars and cuffs (called ‘tunic shirts’). The separate collars and cuffs were stored in collar-boxes. The studs and links to attach these to the shirts were stored in jewellery cases.

As it would be impossible to store all of one’s belongings into a ship’s cabin or berth, or on a railroad-carriage, only the trunks and cases carrying the most essential items were stored close-at-hand. Clothes and other belongings that would not be required until the ship or train reached its destination would be stored in the hold, or in the luggage vans coupled to the backs of trains.

Classic Luggage Stickers

Hotel chains as we know them today did not exist in the early 20th century. Every hotel in town was owned and operated separately, and competition between them was fierce. Every hotel had to be grand, classy, have a catchy and elegant sounding name, and have everything that the guest might desire. Hotels that wanted to stand out had everything custom made. Everything from the stationery, silverware, glassware, china and towels were emblazoned with the hotel’s monogram or logo. And of course, every hotel had to have its own distinct and immediately recognizable set of stylish and colourful luggage-stickers.

Luggage stickers were once like tattoos – unique, colourful, and evidence of a varied and well-travelled past. Just like how sailors who went to sea came back festooned with ink, a steamer-trunk, set of suitcases or a well-travelled Gladstone bag often returned home plastered from lid to base in stickers. Stickers came from almost anywhere and everywhere: from train stations, stickers from shipping companies, and stickers from hotels.

Stickers contained information such as the name of a trunk’s owner, his room number, the train which he had taken, or the name of the ship he had boarded. And if he had boarded a ship, then the sticker might also have his deck and cabin number. If he was on a long train journey and his luggage was stored in the goods-van at the back of the train, his trunk sticker might have his carriage or compartment number.

Today, luggage-stickers are just ugly, black-and-white barcoded, print-out, rip-off, stick-on-and-done affairs. As soon as you arrive at your destination, it’s immediately your mission to remove these stickers as soon as possible, lest their blandness offend the eyes and sensibilities of the delicate. On the other hand, vintage luggage stickers were works of art. They often had bold letters in artistic fonts and colours which spelt out the hotel name, the ship name, the city or port where the sticker was plastered on, and came with decorative pictures or photographs as part of the design. They were like miniature travel posters in their own right and passengers often kept the stickers on their luggage as proof of their travels, and as proof of the extent of their travel. And also because it gave their luggage ‘character’, with the various stickers creating a rainbow patchwork of paper on the bland leather surfaces of their cases and trunks. 

Hotels During the Golden Age of Travel

The rise in the frequency of travel from the late 1800s to the start of the Second World War saw a corresponding rise in the number of hotels. A number of the world’s most famous hotels trace their roots back to this first great age of tourism. In the United States, the Stanley Hotel (1909) was opened by Freelan O. Stanley, co-owner of the famous Stanley Motor Carriage Co., which produced the well-known Stanley steam-powered automobiles of the 1900s-1920s. Notoriously haunted, it gave Stephen King the inspiration for one of his most famous horror novels: “The Shining”. Its guests included Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, musician J.P. Sousa, and President Theodore Roosevelt.

Raffles Hotel. 1, Beach Road, Singapore (opened 1887)

In New York City, the famous Plaza Hotel was opened in 1907. In London, the Langham and Grosvenor Hotels were opened in 1865 and 1862 respectively. The Ritz (1907) and the Savoy (1889) in London remain two of the most famous hotels in the world. In Singapore, Raffles Hotel opened in 1887. But as grand and famous as all these structures are, they all owe a debt to one hotel which has sadly faded into history, no longer operating, and which has been overshadowed by the fame of all the other hotels that have come after it.

The Plaza Hotel, New York City (opened 1907)

The Tremont Hotel, in Boston (closed 1895), one of several hotels named Tremont House or Tremont Hotel scattered around the United States (there were five in total) was the first hotel in the world as we would know them today, which offered amenities like lockable bedroom doors, indoor plumbing, indoor heated baths, indoor toilets, a proper reception area, and bellhops to carry the mountains of luggage mentioned earlier on. Opened in 1829, it predated many of the most famous hotels in the world which still operate, and paved the way for standards in hotel amenities and services which we take for granted today.

As the numbers of hotel guests started to climb as more people found more time and more spare cash with which to travel, hotels started competing with each other. To lure in more customers, they came up with more and newer amenities, better service and furnishings, and all kinds of features and extras which today are considered standards across the hotel industry. In some respects, the service was also much better than what we might be used to today.

These days, we arrive at the hotel and check in. Then, we’re given our key-cards and told our room numbers and left to it, and that’s basically it. In older times, when hotel competition was fierce, this level of ‘service’ was not always acceptable. Back when even a short journey meant bringing a small cartload of luggage with you, the front-desk clerk would ring the counter-bell (similar to the one shown above) to summon a youth who would take your room key and some or all of your luggage, which he either carried upstairs, or loaded onto a hotel luggage-trolley and took upstairs in an elevator. This boy (they were traditionally young men) got his name from the very bell used to summon him – ‘Bellhop’. Once at your room, he unlocked the door for you, helped you carry in your luggage, handed you your key and then left you to your thoughts.

A luxury hotel of the era would’ve come with such amenities as a lobby, hotel restaurants, lounges, bars, and even a ballroom, where a house orchestra or jazz-band would provide music which you could dance to, if you wished. Hotels which had their own house-bands included the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, the Savoy Hotel in London, the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, and Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Big names like Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman would often broadcast live from the Pennsylvania Hotel at set times each evening, for hotel guests to dance to, and for people at home to listen to via radio.

Popular Tourist Destinations

During the Golden Age of Travel, from the late 1800s through to the mid-20th century, a number of countries became popular, famous, and even infamous destinations for the well-heeled globetrotter of yesteryear. Countries like Canada, the United States, Cuba, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Spain, France, Scotland, Ireland, England, Australia, India, the British Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, Japan and China were all popular tourist spots. If you had the time and money, you might take a whole year off, and visit all of them, going on a world tour.

Among the most popular travel destinations were those considered ‘exotic’, such as Egypt, the Middle East, India, the Dutch East Indies, the Straits Settlements, Japan, and one of the most famous of all: The International Settlement of Shanghai.

The Shanghai International Settlement

Shanghai, China’s most famous port city was a free port from 1843-1943, one of several treaty-ports opened and developed by the British after the Opium War of 1839. Anyone could go there and free trade was encouraged, much like Singapore during the same era. Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century, free from the ravages of war in Europe, flourished. It was not only famous, it was notorious.

Tales abounded of gambling, prostitution, drug-trafficking (mostly opium), giddy nightclubs with raucous jazz music, high living, department stores, the Shanghai racetrack, grand ballrooms and luxurious hotels. But Shanghai, for all its glitz and glamour, pulsing nightlife and sheen of neon, also held a seedy underbelly reeking of gangland violence and crime. The police fought riots, stabbings, shootings, kidnappings, rape and an endless battle against the fierce underground opium trade. Shanghai was the original Sin City.

Who wants to go to Shanghai?

Visiting Shanghai in the early 20th century was like visiting Las Vegas today. Its lurid reputation more than anything else, was its biggest draw card. And for the right price, any and all kinds of thrills could be had, if you knew where to look, and who to contact in the crime-infested underworld of the International Settlement.

The Bund of the International Settlement of Shanghai, 1926

One of the first views of Shanghai that you got was The Bund. The Bund, or raised embankment, was the main riverfront thoroughfare of pre-war Shanghai, then called the Shanghai International Settlement. Stretched out along the entire length of the Bund were banking houses, shipping offices, grand hotels, newspaper headquarters, upscale clubs, the Shanghai Customs House, and foreign consulates.

As your ship sailed up the Huangpu River and away from the Yangtze, this was your first view of the city – all its grandeur out on display like some gaudy jewellery-shop window display. The Bund ran the entire width of the British and French Concessions of Shanghai, from Suzhou Creek, and down the west bank of the Huangpu River. And the ships docked right there on the riverside. The moment you got off, you were plunged right into the heart of Old Shanghai. You had your choice of the two best hotels in town: The Palace Hotel, and the Cathay Hotel (which remain there still, along with all the other buildings, which are heritage protected, although the hotels have since been renamed).

The Palace Hotel (left), and the Cathay Hotel (right). Today, they are called the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and the Fairmont Peace Hotel. In the old days, the Cathay Hotel was also called Sassoon House. Shanghai’s premier retail street, Nanking Road, runs between them.

Shanghai was so popular that in the United States, some young men joined the United States Marine Corps (USMC) hoping to be posted to the 4th Marine Regiment, also called the ‘China Marines’, because they were based in Shanghai, a city of exotic and oriental wonder! Due to the city’s cheap labour and high standards of living, even humble soldiers lived in relative luxury while deployed to Shanghai. Here, their main tasks were protecting the boundaries of the city and the American Concession, and enforcing the laws of the International Settlement, although this second duty was also carried out by the multi-ethnic Shanghai Municipal Police, whose job it was to enforce law and order within the Settlement.

The SMP was originally largely British, but also included Chinese, Indian, French, and American officers as well. In 1917, famous American songwriter, Irving Berlin, wrote a now, almost-forgotten song called ‘From Here to Shanghai’, which spoke of the singer’s longing to experience something more exotic than just a trip to ‘dreamy Chinatown’. 1922 saw the publication of ‘Goodbye, Shanghai’, and in 1924, one of the most famous jazz standards of the day, ‘Shanghai Shuffle’ was published, showing how popular this destination was among travelling Europeans and Americans.

Travelling to Shanghai from Europe, or even America, took several weeks. Most ships did not sail to most of their destinations directly. Even the largest ocean liners didn’t do that. There was far more money to be made by making regular stop-offs along the way, which at any rate, were necessary to re-coal the ship, drop off mail and passengers, pick up more mail and more passengers, restock the ship for the next leg of its voyage, and then carry on. A ship sailing from England to China might stop at Cherbourg, Casablanca, Marseille, Naples, Port Sa’id, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo before finally dropping anchor at its final destination: Shanghai. You can see now, why such a trip would take up to two months to complete! 

The Shanghai International Settlement went by many names. ‘The Paris of the East’, and ‘The Whore of the Orient’ were two of the most common, reflecting both its ritzy, exotic nature, and its Devil-May-Care way of life.

The Peking Legation Quarter

For tourists wanting to visit the old capital of China (it was moved to Nanking in 1927), you either caught a train from Shanghai to Tientsin, and then to Peking, or else sailed to Tientsin directly and caught a train from there. And while in Peking, you stayed at the famous Peking Legation Quarter, at the Grand Hotel de Pekin, or the Grand Hotel Des Wagons Lits. The Legation Quarter, like the International Settlement to the south, was the Western expatriate enclave within a larger, Chinese city.

After the famous Siege of the Legations in 1900, the entire compound was surrounded by walls and gates to protect it against possible future uprisings, making it look like a walled city. The Grand Hotel Des Wagons Lits was operated by the same company which ran the famous Orient Express, the Compagnie Internationale Des Wagons Lits (“International Sleeping-Car Company”). In Peking, just like in modern Beijing, chief tourist destinations were the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City. After the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the Forbidden City was opened to the public as the Palace Museum in 1925, a position it has held ever since.

Singapore: The Crossroads of the East

Another popular tourist stop was Singapore. Called ‘The Crossroads of the East’, Singapore was ideally situated for a quick stopover on your inspection of the South Pacific. A British colony since the 1810s, Singapore was widely considered to be one of the nicest, grandest, most exotic, and safest places in the world to have a holiday. After all, it had one of the finest military airbases in Asia, as well as some of the best coastal fortifications. For this reason, it was also proudly touted as the ‘Gibraltar of the East’, as well.

The place to stay at while in Singapore was of course, Raffles Hotel. Opened in 1887, Raffles has housed all manner of celebrities, from Noel Coward to Rudyard Kipling and even British royalty. Raffles’ main slogan in the early 20th century came from a review given by Kipling in 1887, months after the hotel opened. Glowing with praise, Kipling had said: “When in Singapore, feed at Raffles!” – however, Raffles was careful not to publicise the rest of his review, which continued: “…and sleep at the Hotel De L’Europe!” – The Hotel De L’Europe was Raffles’ main competition in Singapore at the time! Unlike the Hotel De L’Europe, however, Raffles survived the Great Depression. The De L’Europe, by comparison, closed its doors in the mid-1930s due to falling guest numbers.

As a free port and main stopover for ships plying the passenger trade from Europe to Asia, Singapore boasted excellent shopping. A visit to Orchard Road was almost mandatory, to seek out the latest oriental wonders brought to the colony by ships sailing back from China and Japan.

Berlin: Cultural Center of Europe

Despite the scourge of the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War, during the late 1800s and early part of the 20th century, the city of Berlin, Germany, was a popular tourist-spot for the well-to-do. Renowned as a center of culture, art, music and politics, Berlin attracted writers, journalists, politicians and famous actors.

Hotels like the Adlon became famous as haunts for foreign newspaper-reporters and visiting VIPs. As the Hotel Adlon in particular was (and still is) located in the governmental and diplomatic quarter of Berlin, it was the ideal place to stay for journalists wishing to cover German politics. Foreign embassies and the Reichstag were all nearby. Even today, the Russian and British embassies in Berlin are located just a few blocks from this famous hotel, which was rebuilt in the 1990s on its original location.

Before the scourge of Nazism in the mid-1930s, Berlin was famous for its café culture, its jazz-music and its contributions to film and theatre. European cabaret flourished in Germany during this period and developed its own unique, raunchy humor in the nightclubs and taverns of Berlin. The center of commercial and social life in Berlin was Potsdamer Platz, one of the city’s main squares. Originally formed by the intersection of five different roads, this large, open space was an ideal hub in the center town from which almost anything could be reached. Grand hotels were built nearby, the Potsdamer Platz railroad station was built near this location, and in 1897, the Wetheim department-store was opened near the square. By the 1920s, it was the largest department-store in Europe.

The Nazi rise to power spelt the end to almost all of this. Many of the actors and musicians were at least partially Jewish, and they fled Germany in droves to escape persecution. Many of the actors in the famous 1942 film “Casablanca” were German, Austrian or Czech Jewish refugees which had been actors in their home-countries. They fled to America during the 1930s and reestablished themselves in Hollywood, when it became clear that they could no-longer act in Nazi-controlled countries. German cabaret, which had a strong focus on political and social satire, was all but abolished by the Nazis.

Baedeker Guide Books

Any eager tourist heading off to far-flung destinations today might consult TripAdvisor, or read up on their Lonely Planet guidebooks. If you went anywhere during the Golden Age of Travel, most likely, you stopped off at your local bookshop or travel agency, and asked to be shown their current stock of ‘Baedekers’.

‘Baedeker’ was a German publishing house established in 1827. Throughout much of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the Baedeker family became famous for printing guidebooks. Published in German and English, ‘Baedekers’ covered everything from countries around the world, to counties or states within countries, to cities and towns within states, and could be remarkably detailed. From the mid-1850s, Baedeker guides, which were regularly updated, covered countries all around the world. They started being printed in English in 1861, when company founder, Karl Baedeker, realized that for their firm to be successful, they had to appeal to as many languages as possible.

Countries which had Baedeker guidebooks written about them included: Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Palestine, Syria, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, Canada and the United States! And that’s just from 1861-1900! Other countries that were included in editions printed in the 20th century included Spain, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Cities which earned their own guidebooks were numerous, and extended from London, to Paris to Peking, in China!

Stop and consider for a minute what a challenge it would’ve been to amass such a stockpile of information in an age before the internet. Imagine having to write guidebooks on cities and countries thousands of miles away, and having to rely on steam-post and electric telegraph for communications. Imagine the effort and time it took to send people thousands of miles away to far-off countries to research and gather this information. Far-off countries? In 1914, Baedeker published its first guidebook (in German) on the South Pacific, covering the British Straits Settlements (Malaya, Singapore) and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). A journey from Germany to Singapore took over a month by steamship!

An Ongoing Journey

The number of things that a person could say and write about this exciting and romanticised element and era of history are almost endless. I’ll be making another posting soon, about the three most famous vehicles of the Golden Age of Travel – the Hindenburg Airship, the Queen Mary, and the Orient Express!

 

Antique Sealing-Wax Stove

Sometimes, you really do find the weirdest things, when you’re out antiquing. Over the years, I’ve stumbled across everything from Pieces of Eight to razor-blade sharpeners, pill-rollers and writing slopes. But sometimes…just sometimes…you find something so obscure and unheard of that not only have you never seen it before, you’ve never heard of it before, and you’ve never even come across one on the internet! Likely, you’ve never even considered that such a thing might even exist!

Such was the case last week!

It was on a very windy Sunday morning in July when I picked up this curious rectangular, metal object. It was pointed out to me by the stallholder as something in which I might show a particular interest! And boy, was he right!

I remember staring at this object, a mounting sense of curiosity building up inside me as I laughed at it and picked it up.

“What is it!?”
“Ever seen something like this before?”
“Hell no! What’s it do?”
“It’s pretty fantastic, huh? It’s for heating sealing-wax! You like that kind of old-world writing stuff, don’t you?”
“Well…yeah!”
“Buy it! You’ll never see another one of these, mate!”

Deciding that he was probably right, I haggled the price down and handed him the money. Apart from a bit of rubbing and wear, the piece was in absolutely wonderful condition – no cracks, no scratching, no dents, no missing or broken parts – everything was in perfect working order! A bit stiff in its operation, perhaps, but nothing that a good cleaning couldn’t fix!

All closed up

The furnace, or stove, is comprised of four main parts.

First is the body or shell. This is divided into two sections – the upper section, accessed by a flat, hinged lid, and the lower section, accessed by another hinged lid, with a circular handle screwed into the front.

The second part is the two-piece burner or spirit-lamp. This is the little rectangular unit that slides out of the bottom compartment. The top half of the burner comprises of the wick, and the adjustment-knob on the side, with the reservoir underneath.

The spirit-burner

It’s basically a small oil-lamp which burns kerosene or lamp-oil. The burner-unit is unscrewed, the reservoir is filled with oil, the wick and burner-unit are screwed back on, and once the oil has wicked its way up the wick, it can be lit with a match. Turning the wick up creates a strong, bright flame that is used as a heat-source for melting the wax.

The bottom door opened, showing the spirit lamp underneath

The sealing wax itself is stored in the third component – the wax pan. The pan is basically a metal dish or trough into which chunks or sticks of sealing wax are placed to be melted. The trough is heated from below by the flame of the spirit lamp, and once the metal is hot enough, the wax inside the trough melts into a liquid state.

Opening the top door reveals the removable wax pan above the burner-unit

Riveted to the sides of the body of the stove is the fourth component of the stove – an insulated carrying handle – suggesting that the stove is meant to be portable – this is borne out by the fact that the burner-unit fits into flanges or grooves inside the lower compartment of the stove-body, presumably to hold it in position under the middle of the wax-pan, and to stop it from sliding around when it’s being carried – important when you’ve got boiling hot wax and open flames around!

Is It A Rare Item?

I suspect that it is. I mean how many antique, working sealing-wax stoves have there got to be in the world? A look online revealed a surprisingly large number of sealing-wax melting devices, variously labeled as ‘stoves’, ‘kilns’ or even ‘furnaces’, but these were all modern ones. They’re low capacity, low-heat devices, usually incorporating a tealight candle.

They’re cheaply made with wooden and metal frames and bases, and are used only for melting small quantities of wax – enough for maybe one or two seals at a time. None of them have any age to them, and none of them are designed for large-scale, long-term use. They’re sold more as a cutesy gimmick, not as an actual piece of office or desktop equipment.

During all my searching, I found only two other antique sealing-wax stoves online, and only one of them was similar in design to mine. This would lead me to believe that they aren’t that common, and that if others do exist out there, then they’ve probably been mis-identified…which wouldn’t surprise me – after all, how many offices would’ve had a device like this sitting around?

What Is The Purpose of the Stove?

The stove is designed to melt and liquefy sealing wax, used for sealing documents and parcels, and provide a device for evidence of tampering. Traditional sealing-wax is very hard and brittle – it’s designed to shatter and crack if any stress is applied to it. Unfortunately, this quality means that it’s also much harder to melt than conventional candle-wax, or even modern, soft-textured sealing-wax.

Given that it would take higher heat and a longer time to melt traditional sealing-wax, it would make sense that any office where documents had to be sealed regularly, such as a post-office, bank, or lawyer’s office, would have a stove like this constantly lit, so that a supply of hot, liquid sealing-wax was on standby at the moment’s notice. To seal a document, one simply had to open the lid, scoop out the required amount with a ladle, and pour it over the document or parcel which required sealing.

How Does It Work?

Very simply! You place sticks or pellets of sealing-wax in the pan at the top of the stove. Drop the pan in, and close the lid. Then you fill the spirit lamp or burner with lamp-oil, or kerosene. You let the fuel rise up the wick, then light it with a match, like any other oil lamp. Turn the wick up to the highest level it can go without smoking, and then slide it into the bottom compartment between the two guide-rails. Then close the lower door (or leave it open, up to you).

Lighting the wick and testing out the spirit lamp

Once the lamp is lit, it’s just a matter of waiting for the flame to heat the pan, to melt the wax down to a liquid state. Obviously, the more wax there is in the pan, the longer it takes to melt. I imagine they did this on a case-by-case basis – they’d melt just enough wax to make a few seals, and after every 2-3 uses, they’d toss in another stick of wax to melt, so that it’d be liquid by the time they needed to use it again, while keeping the stove burning all day long throughout office hours.

The insulated carry-handle at the back

The carrying-handle on the stove suggests that it was meant to be portable – and that it was intended that the stove could be moved from desk to desk around a large office so that different people could use it, rather than taking their documents to a central table to seal them when needed.

How Old Is the Stove and Who Made It?

I honestly don’t know. I’d estimate early 1900s, probably not later than after the First World War, and as far back as the 1880s or thereabouts. There’s no real information on the device itself that gives us any information as to its history.

The only information provided is “SUTHERLAND, THOMSON & Co., 31 Tooley Street, London“. They’re identified as late as the 1930s, as being a supplier of “Dairy equipment and Scientific Glassware” – but that doesn’t mean that they made the stove. They might’ve sold it as the retailer, or simply have bought it for their own use in sealing documents and parcels. I saw one other one online supposedly sold by the same company, so they may have been an established retailer, although I have no real proof one way or the other. There are no patent-numbers, model-numbers, serial-numbers or any other marks on the device at all that tell us anything about it.

 

H. Hughes & Son “Officer-of-the-Watch” Telescope (Ca. 1920).

After selling one of my telescopes last year at an antiques fair (and making a very healthy profit on it, if I do say so myself!), I was able to splurge a bit on another ‘scope – of a particular style which I have, until now, not had the privilege of adding to my collection.

I’ve seen a number of these telescopes over the years, but they were all in absolutely terrible condition. Most of them were covered with dents, scratches, loose or broken lenses…and outrageous price-tags! I don’t know about you, but $650 for a telescope with no glass inside it sounds like a very steep price to pay for what is basically a very nice, polished metal tube covered in leather.

I got this particular ‘scope from my local flea-market and after checking it all over for flaws and damage, decided that it was worth the expense to buy it. It had one or two minor faults, all relating to the leather sheathing, but nothing that some restoration (eventually…if it ever needs it) couldn’t rectify. So, for much less than the nearly $700 that the other telescopes were going for, I decided to buy it.

What is an ‘Officer of the Watch’ Telescope?

With its long, thin profile and single draw-tube, sliding glare-shield and smooth, leather cladding, this telescope is quite different from a lot of the others that you’ll find out ‘in the wild’ as it were. Most antique telescopes that you’ll find out and about are multi-tube telescopes without any type of sliding glare-shield, and they’re usually much smaller, with a closed length of anywhere from four to six to eight inches; some slightly larger ones might be about twelve inches, but not many will be longer than that.

Telescope with the draw-tube (back) and the glare-shield (front) extended.

By comparison, an officer-of-the-watch telescope typically measures 18 inches when closed up, stretching out to about two feet when fully extended. Most other telescopes can double or triple their lengths easily when they’re extended, while this particular model does not. Exactly why it was designed this way will be explained later on.

The Maker’s details.

These telescopes are called Officer-of-the-watch/officer-on-watch (‘OOW’) telescopes because they were usually purchased by officers or captains serving in the navy or the merchant marine for use on the ship’s bridge. Such telescopes were either the private property of the officers who carried them, or else were the property of the ship, and were kept on the bridge at all times for use by the crew. Their purpose was to provide a vision-aid close to hand for officers on the bridge in the event of an emergency.

Why are they shaped like they are?

A closeup of the glare-shield.

As I said earlier, Officer-of-the-Watch telescopes are long and narrow, with single draw-tubes and sliding glare-shields over their objective lenses. Their unique shape is due to the constraints of their working environments. Since these telescopes were usually kept (and used in) the bridge of a ship at sea, they had to be compact. A shorter, two-foot telescope was lighter, easier to carry and easier to use in the confined space of a ship’s wheelhouse, compared to a more conventional naval telescope (some of which could be three or even four feet long!). Try swinging that around inside a wheelhouse without cracking the helmsman in the head! He won’t thank you for it!

How Old are these Telescopes?

Officer-of-the-watch telescopes date to the early 20th century and appear to have been made exclusively in Britain. They were manufactured starting ca. 1900 up to the middle of the century. and were originally manufactured for the Royal Navy, but their use drifted into regular merchant-marine use as well due to their practicality of design.

So, what is an Officer of the Watch?

In the ship’s crew, an officer of the watch (or ‘officer on watch’) is the officer in charge of watchkeeping. Every officer on the ship, generally from the captain down to the lowest-ranking officer, covers watchkeeping in shifts. Traditionally, a watch was four hours long. During that four-hour shift, an officer stood watch on the bridge. Here, he could oversee the ship’s navigation, the weather, the speed and direction of travel, and could respond swiftly to emergencies. The officer of the watch had to be good at navigation, reading the weather, and at assessing dangerous situations such as storms, reefs, rocks and other hazards. In the absence of the captain (who might be sleeping, working, having dinner or be otherwise engaged), the officer of the watch was in charge of the ship’s immediate handling and navigation.

The “HUSUN” trademark on the glare-shield, comprised of the ocean and the rising sun

Typically, the officer of the watch was joined by at least two other sailors – a forward lookout or two, and a junior seaman known as a quartermaster, whose job was usually that of controlling the ship’s direction by manning the helm or the ship’s wheel. Officer-of-the-Watch telescopes were usually mounted on the wheelhouse walls, secured in place by brackets or rings to stop them rolling or sliding around.

In the event of something posing a hazard or threat to the ship (such as an oncoming storm, a coastline, rocks, a lighthouse or other ships), the officer of the watch could use the telescope provided (or one which he himself had purchased) to assess the situation ahead.

The bridge of the RMS Queen Mary. The semicircular devices on pedestals are the ship’s engine-order telegraphs

Since it could be dangerous to leave the wheelhouse during rough or stormy weather, a slimmer, more compact telescope which could be used easily indoors was preferable to the much longer, thicker, and heavier telescopes usually used at sea. Once the hazard had been identified, the ship could take appropriate action, either changing course, or else ordering the ship to stop or slow down, usually done by operating the engine-order telegraphs on the bridge, to send or ‘ring’ orders down to the engine-room below (each telegraph was equipped with a bell that dinged with each movement of the telegraph-arm so that the engineer could hear the change in orders from the bridge, over the drone of the engines).

What Features do these Telescopes Have?

To begin with, one of the most noticeable features of these telescopes is how thin they are. Typically not more than about three inches wide (if that!). A useful feature, since it would make the telescope easy to grip and hold – even if it’s winter on the Atlantic, and you’re wearing gloves to stop frostbite, but you need to spot an iceberg right ahead!

Another useful feature is the leather, non-slip cladding on the barrel. This was partially done for style purposes, but it also makes the telescope easier to grip with wet, cold hands in an emergency.

The third most noticeable feature that you’ll find on every officer of the watch telescope is the sliding shield at the front. Variously called ‘dew shields’ and ‘glare shields’, their purpose was to keep rain, seawater, spray and sunlight off the main lens (known as the ‘objective lens’). By sliding the shield out ahead of the lens, it prevented the sun’s rays from reflecting off the glass and potentially blinding the user, and it also kept the glass clear of raindrops or sea-spray in heavy weather, and was a popular feature on maritime telescopes.

Are These Types of Telescopes Common?

They are fairly common, yes. I’ve seen about four or five before I eventually bought this one. Most of them were in terrible, unusable condition due to their age and the lives they led, but you can find working examples for not too much money, if you’re patient. They’re typically made of brass (which may or may not be nickel-plated. Mine is plated) and are typically 18 inches long, extending out to about 24 inches in open length. Living in Australia, a country which until the late 20th century was accessible only by ship, finding maritime antiques isn’t that difficult. Barometers, ship’s clocks, telescopes, binoculars and sextants are pretty common here.

If you’re thinking of buying an antique telescope, then you need to check for things like dents, cracks, scratches and warpage. Damaged lenses can be hard to replace, and so should be avoided. Dents on the barrel (but even moreso on the draw-tubes) should be avoided as much as possible. Dents will misshape the profile of the tube and make it harder to draw in and out of the telescope. Dents on the draw-tubes will cause the telescope to jam.

If you have the right tools and enough patience, you can press and roll out (or at least reduce) stubborn dents, but you should be careful not to warp the shape of the tube. I was able to use a heavy, wooden rolling pin to roll out the dent inside the glare-shield on one of my favourite telescopes with great success. It wasn’t entirely eliminated, but it was reduced significantly – enough that it was no longer causing the shield to jam every time I opened or closed it.

The eyepiece shutter (closed) on the end of the telescope.

You should check that the sliding eyepiece shutter over the eyepiece lens is in good condition. If loose, they can be tightened by screwing them back into place. If they’re too tight, loosen the screw slightly. If the screw works itself loose repeatedly after tightening, every time you open and close the shutter, then a DROP of oil on the shutter will provide enough lubrication to allow the shutter to slide open and shut, without the friction that would also loosen the screw.

Simply tighten the screw as much as possible, apply a dab of oil and work it in. I’ve had to do that with a couple of telescopes in the past and provided the oil doesn’t dry out completely (unlikely), then it’s a very effective little fix.

Last but not least, you should check the telescope for its lens cap. Not all telescopes were designed to have lens-caps, but most did. This one does not have a cap over the objective lens, and never did. Instead it has a leather hood that drops over it, but most telescopes are meant to have them, to protect the objective lens from dust, water and damage. That said, it’s rather common to buy antique telescopes without their lens-caps included.

Anyway, that wraps up my posting about my rather different and interesting addition to my collection. For more information about antique telescopes, I can strongly recommend the blog of Nicholas Denbow, at The Telescope Collector. His posts are both entertaining, informative and fun to read!

 

Solid Brass Dunhill Lift-Arm ‘Wafer’ Cigarette Lighter (Ca. 1930)

The things you stumble across at the flea-market, hey?

Today, one of…many…things…which I stumbled across at my local market, on a cold, windy, drizzling Sunday morning, was A cute little piece of antique brassware…

The back of the lighter, showing the striker-wheel, snuffer-cap, flint-tube, and the threaded cap to the tube. Inside the flint-tube is a piece of cylindrical flint-stone, and a small flint-spring, used to adjust the pressure of the flint against the wheel, for optimum striking.

I’ve always had a thing for oldschool, lift-arm cigarette lighters. And today, I finally found one – in brass (which I love) – from one of the most prolific makers of flashy, stylish lighters in the world: A. Dunhill. I was able to haggle the price down and toddled off into the cold and blustery morning air with a really cute piece of antique smoking paraphernalia (not that I smoke or anything, I just think lighters are cool…).

Lift-arm cigarette-lighters (so-called because of the spring-loaded arm with the snuffer-cap on the end of it), were among the world’s first truly successful cigarette lighters. With the invention of standard-sized lighter-flints in the early 1900s, mankind realised that portable firelighting was now possible, and on a scale much larger than just a box of matches. Lighters could be any size, any shape, and any style, so long as they all had the major components of a striker-wheel, wick, fuel-reservoir, flint-tube, flint and snuffer-cap or lid.

Early lighters were fiddly things. They resembled lipstick-tubes. You removed the cap, spun the wheel, and once you were done with the flame, you blew it out, or snuffed it by putting the cap back onto the lighter.

This might be alright, if you didn’t need a hand free to light the candle…or a cigar, or cigarette…or lamp…or incriminating business-documents…clearly, something better needed to be devised.

Enter: The lift-arm lighter.

Lift-arms started being made roughly around the time of the First World War. Two-part lighters with a separate body and cap were still around, but obviously in combat, it’s kind of tricky to be fiddling around with stuff like that when you need to light a fuse or a lamp or a candle in a hurry.

By the 1920s, lift-arms (and variations on that theme) became the go-to lighters for the discerning smoker. The design was simple:

A spring next to the snuffer-arm held it under tension. It either kept the arm closed, or open. The spring forced the arm to assume one of two positions, with the pressure of the spring holding it in that position until it was changed.

With this design, the size of lighters could be made more compact. There was no need for removable caps anymore, and as such, the whole top half of a lighter (which would usually cover the flint-wheel and wick etc) could be made much smaller. On top of that, a cigarette lighter could now be operated easily in one hand, rather than two.

In fact, a lighter could easily be operated by one FINGER, on one hand. When holding the lighter in one’s hand, ready for use, the only digit that moves, to open the snuffer-cap and strike the wheel, is the thumb. All other fingers remain stationary.

The famous concave-shaped lift-arm, on the top of the lighter, with ‘DUNHILL’ marked on it. To the left is the snuffer-cap, to the right is the L-shaped spring that holds the arm open, or shut.

Companies like K.W. Weiden, Dunhill, and many others besides, all made variations on lift-arm lighters, which were most popular between about 1920-1939. This particular model dates to 1930. For reasons I’ve never understood, the design died out after World War Two, with very few, if any, of this particular type of lighter being made in the postwar era. Some companies (Dunhill among them) did make some right up through the 1950s, but by the 60s, they appear to have dropped off the map completely.

After that, most companies (Dunhill included) switched over to spring-loaded snuffer-cap lighters, which could be opened, and lit, all in one movement, instead of the two-movement lift-arm-and-strike-wheel motion of the older lighters (the ZIPPO, based on a pre-war, 1930s design, is about the only lighter made today which still does that).

I think it’s because this style of lighter was around for such a short period of time (probably not more than two decades between the wars), that I find it so interesting. It dominated the world for a few brief years, and then was seen no more.

The arm lifted, ready for use…

Are Lighters like this Collectible?

Yes they are. Well, all lighters are collectible, but I think people like these above some other designs just because they represent a particular era in lighter manufacturing.

Are they Rare?

Not especially. The nicer ones, which were made in sterling silver, or even solid gold, are rare, sure. But a standard brass or nickel-plated one, similar to what’s shown here, is not especially rare. That said, they do cost a bit more than your average, vintage, liquid-fuel lighter just because of their age.

I notice the cap on the flint-tube doesn’t screw in all the way. Is it broken?

Nope! It’s designed that way. As the flint wears down, you tighten the cap, which increases pressure on the spring inside the tube, which causes it to press the remaining flint harder against the striker-wheel.

So What did you Have to Do to Get it Working?

Well, a fair bit, actually. Remember, this lighter is about ninety years old!

To get it working, I removed the wick, I removed the cotton wadding inside the lighter, and using a needle, I poked at, and broke up, the old chunk of flint still left inside the lighter.

The flint-spring was long gone. I got another one of the right size from another, broken lighter, and trimmed it to the right length using a pair of pliers. Then I simply slipped it into the tube, after a fresh flint. When buying a vintage lighter, keep in mind that there’s usually a piece of old flint stuck in the tube, from when the lighter was last operational. After decades, this flint hardens up, crumbles and clogs the tube. You can’t put another one in before you remove the blockage, and this can easily be achieved by poking the old flint with a needle or pin until it crumbles to dust. Then just tap it out of the tube. The tube is clear when you can see  the corrugated striker-wheel at the other end.

The next step was to replace the wick. I’m not going to lie – replacing a wick is a real lesson in patience. First, you need to remove all the cotton wadding inside the lighter…Yes, through that tiny hole in the bottom. The wick comes out after it.

After that, you need to insert a new wick. I recommend using Zippo wicks because they come with copper wire woven into the length of wick. This is useful because you can bend, shape and twist the wire to stop the wick from bunching up and kinking. Once you’ve twisted the wick and the wire into a thin enough point, you can simply poke it through the hole in the TOP of the lighter.

You may need some tweezers to help you with this. Ideally, the wick will snake through the body of the lighter, and come out the fuel-hole in the bottom. If it doesn’t, just catch it with some tweezers and yank it through, leaving maybe a quarter-inch of wick at the top (fold the wick over using the copper wire, to stop it from being accidentally yanked through the lighter).

The next step is to re-stuff all the wadding back into the lighter. If you want, you can change this for fresh wadding (use cotton-balls), but this isn’t strictly necessary. Cram the wadding into the body of the lighter any which-way, using tweezers or something similar to stuff it in. Fold and coil the wick back into the lighter as you go along, first one way, then the other, holding it in place using the chunks of wadding as you stuff them back in.

The final task is to juice up your lighter. Fill the wadding-packed compartment with as much lighter-fuel as you can squeeze into it. Be prepared for a bit of runoff.

Finally, screw in the filler-cap.

Last but not least, take a closer look at that filler-cap. You may notice that the inside of the cap has a little ‘nipple’ on it. Twist that thing and see what happens. In most cases, the nipple will gradually unscrew. This little compartment inside the filler-cap is meant to store spare flint-stones. Depending on the size of your lighter and the cap, you can easily store one or two extra flints in here. Don’t worry, the lighter-fuel all around them won’t damage them, and at any rate, the cap will keep them dry.

My Lighter Won’t Light!

The end-result.

Yeah that’s a bitch, huh?

A vintage lighter not lighting can be due to a number of factors.

1). The striker-wheel is worn out.

This rarely happens, but it can happen. Basically, the corrugations on the striker-wheel are worn so smoothly that they no longer catch the flint. Not much you can do about this. If you can actually remove the striker-wheel (this is sometimes possible, depending on the design of the lighter), then you can try filing in new grooves, but it’s a fiddly process. In most cases, a lighter with a worn-out striker wheel is a lost cause.

2). The striker-wheel is clogged.

Basically, the striker-wheel won’t strike because the grooves in the wheel won’t catch the flint. Same as above, except this time, they won’t catch the flint because the grooves that do the catching are clogged – usually with flint-dust from hundreds of previous strikings. You can fix this by using a needle or pin to scrape out all the gunk hiding inside the grooves. To make the process easier, you can try cleaning out the gunk using lighter-fluid, and cotton-buds.

3). The lighter won’t spark, but it has a new flint…?

Yeah this can happen from time to time. Usually the reason it won’t spark is because there isn’t enough pressure between the flint, and the wheel, which is regulated by the flint-spring (mentioned above).

To increase pressure, tighten the flint-tube cap. If the spring is really tired and worn out and dead, you can increase pressure in another way – put two flints into the tube, instead of one. This isn’t always possible, but if you can do it, it’s a cheap and dirty fix.

So How old is this Lighter?

Researching a number of online collections and catalogues suggests that this lighter is from ca. 1930, with a ‘wafer-pattern’ design on the body, as made by Dunhill in gold, silver, and brass (this is the brass model), the last of which could come with gold or silver plating as a variation. I doubt this one ever had any plating, but I love it, regardless!

 

A German Stockman – Restoring a Vintage Pocketknife!

I got interested in pocketknives when I was in university. I found that I was doing a lot more cutting than I did previous to that point in my life. Cutting open food-containers, cutting open boxes, slicing paper, cutting open wrappers and plastic packaging, cutting tags…all kinds of things. And I often found myself in a situation where I needed a pocketknife, but didn’t have one. And after this happened more than a couple of times, I decided that the time was right for me to actually go out and find a nice knife.

Well, that was about ten years ago, and since then, I’ve gained a minor appreciation for antique and vintage pocketknives. I wouldn’t say that I’m an active collector of pocketknives, but I know what I like, and I sometimes go hunting for them at flea-markets and antiques fairs, and if I see something nice for a good price, I buy it. Depending on how practical the knife is, or how interesting or different it is, I may either add it to my small collection, or sell it after I’ve finished tinkering with it.

My current, modest knife collection. The largest knife is four inches from bolster to bolster.

That said, I don’t have a large collection of pocketknives. Maybe three or four small ones? I used to have loads more – at my max, about eight or nine, but I sold the vast majority of them simply because I tend to be a USER more than a COLLECTOR. I don’t like owning things that I don’t use, and so because of that I sold almost all of them, except ones which I really, really liked.

I have three little pen-knives with mother-of-pearl and ivory scales (if you’re a regular follower of this blog, you might remember I did a posting about a couple of those a few months back), and I used to have four or five others – which I gradually sold over time as I found better knives to replace them.

As of the writing of this particular post, I just sold another knife (a two-bladed English Barlow-pattern) online to trim down the collection a bit.

But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting is about the knife I found, which replaced that English Barlow!

…and there it is!

The German Stockman

I bought this knife about two weeks ago for a couple of tens of dollars. I don’t exactly blow the bank when it comes to buying pocketknives, and this is probably the most I’ve ever spent on a knife in my life! It’s a three-bladed slip-joint folding pocketknife, of a style known as the ‘stockman’, so-called because this design was originally meant for use by farmers, cowboys, drovers, shepherds and livestock managers. The three blades were meant to accomplish different tasks when it came to looking after livestock (I’ll get into that later on down the line…).

I liked the knife because it was a nice, medium-sized knife with blades of decent length and thickness, and it had the sort of simple, clean look that I generally go for in things that I like to use on an everyday basis. The three blades gave me options, and the black scales were elegant without being flashy.

How Do You Know it’s from Germany?

I’m not entirely sure what company made the knife, but it comes from Solingen, Germany. This much I do know, because it’s stamped on the shank of the blade. And as the ShamWow guy says: “You know the Germans always make good stuff!”

They sure do! After all, not for nothing has Solingen been the cutlery capital of Europe for the better part of…what? Five hundred, six hundred years? The cutlery trade in Solingen dates back, quite literally – to Medieval times.

They still make surgical blades, razors, scissors, kitchen-knives and cutlery and pocketknives there today! Famous companies like DOVO (straight razors), Wusthof (kitchen knives), and Boker (more razors), are all based in Solingen. The city was originally home to a famous guild of swordsmiths back in the Middle Ages. If you’re collecting antique straight-razors or pocketknives, you can generally rest assured that any knife with ‘SOLINGEN’ stamped onto the blade is worth the money spent to get it. After all – 700-odd years worth of knife-making has to count for something, right?

I don’t know how old the knife is, exactly, but my guess is that it’s from the early 20th century, most likely before WWII. That being the case, I doubt this knife is more than about 80 or 90 years old.

The Anatomy of a Pocketknife

The classic, slip-joint, folding pocketknife comes with about half a dozen different components. So  you can follow what I’m going to write later on in this post, here’s a breakdown…

The Blades

A knife obviously starts with the blade. Most slipjoint knives have at least two blades. Some only have one, most will have two or three. Some models made by other manufacturers (such as Victorinox in Switzerland) have knives which have loads of blades and accessories folded away. But for the basic knife, one, two, or three blades – sometimes four – is standard.

A slipjoint pocketknife will have blades that have ‘nail-nicks’ cut into them. These are the little grooves that run under the spine of the blade, so that you can actually pull the blade out of the knife-handle.

The Handle

The handle of the knife is made up of about four or five different components, they are…

The Bolsters

The bolsters are the end-pieces on the ends of the knife, usually made of nickel-silver, steel, or brass.

The Liners

The liners are flat strips of metal inside the knife. They’re usually made of brass, to prevent rusting. The liners serve as washers to reduce friction between the moving parts of the knife. There is a liner between each blade, and the exterior of the knife.

The Back-Spring

The spring is the flat, flexible steel lever or leaf-spring on the knife that holds the blades open, or shut. It flexes up and down as the blades are opened and closed. The tension on this spring is what stops the blades from flopping around.

The Pins/Rivets

Knives have pins or rivets punched through them. These are here to serve as pivots or hinges for the blades, and to hold the handle components (spring, liners, blades etc) together.

The Scales

Last but not least, you have the scales. Not all pocketknives have scales. Some do, some don’t. Their purpose is to protect the liners and the rivets and other components of the knife from damage, although these days, scales are largely there for decorative purposes. Scales can be made from almost anything – celluloid, wood, bone, ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell, and even solid silver…are very common on antique and vintage knives.

Different Knife Models

Pocketknives come in various styles and types. While these days there are loads of different variations – when you’re looking at vintage and antique knives, you’ll largely come across a set group of basic designs, although these are by NO MEANS the only types out there, and there are countless variations. Here are just three or four of the really common ones…

The Stockman.

The three blades of the stockman, from left to right: Spey, Sheep’s Foot, and Clip.

The stockman is the knife-type which I’m building this posting about. Used by livestock cowboys, farmers and shepherds in the past – hence the name. The stockman is a three-blade folding knife, typically consisting of a clip, sheepsfoot, and spey blade. They range in size from a couple of inches to four or five inches long (the one I have is four inches, closed up).

The Barlow

My old Barlow knife which the stockman has now replaced! As you can see, I like simple, clean styling.

One of the OLDEST knives around, the ‘Barlow’ style pocket-knife has two blades at one end, one long all-purpose blade, and one shorter blade, usually for cutting pen-points for quills, and sharpening pencils. Barlows go back for CENTURIES and their use is dated all the way back to the 1600s.

The Trapper!

The trapper knife comes from the knives originally used by fur-trappers back in the 1700s and 1800s. Trapper knives have two blades on one end of the handle, and the blades are long and equal-length, used for killing and skinning animals for their fur pelts.

The Canoe.

The canoe-knife is exactly what it sounds like – a knife shaped like a canoe! It’s a smaller knife, with two blades, one on each end of the handle. The body of the knife is cigar-shaped, but with a dip in the middle on one side, and curved edges at the ends, giving it the general appearance of an American Indian canoe, hence the name.

There are loads of other knife-styles out there, but these are four of the most common ones that you’re likely to find at flea-markets, antiques shops, auction-houses, etc.

Restoring Your Pocket Knife!

Keep in mind that not ALL knives can be restored. Some can, some can’t. Some are just too far gone, too broken, rusted or damaged to be repaired or revived. Here, I’ll be walking you through what I do to all the knives that I’ve ever bought, fixed and sold, or kept and used.

If you have the tools and equipment, you can literally pull a knife to pieces and clean it that way, but I’m working with the assumption that you, like me, probably don’t have most of those things, and that you’ll be cleaning and restoring your knife WITHOUT pulling it apart. Based on that assumption, let’s begin!

So, you found a really sweet pocketknife at the flea-market, or in an antiques shop, that you really love! It’s just the right size, or perhaps it’s the style or shape, or the scale-material, or maybe it’s manufactured by the same folks who made the one that grandpa gave you…which you lost as a teenager…However it happens, you found a knife! Only…it’s not in the best condition. It’s not completely dead, but it’s a bit rusty, it’s really stiff and crudded up, and it couldn’t slice melted butter. So, what do you do?

Rust-Removal.

For me, the first step is always rust removal. To do this, you need sandpaper. Get fine or ultrafine sandpaper, and a lubricant (Brasso, or sewing machine oil are generally good). Rub the lubricant over the rusty areas (usually the blades, hilts and back-springs) and start rubbing the sandpaper over it. Start coarse, and work to fine, then ultrafine. If you want to, you can also use 0000-grade ultrafine steel wool for the really soft, last cleaning. The aim is to remove the rust, and polish the blade at the same time.

If the back-springs on the knife are really rusty, then if it’s on the outside – just run the knife back and forth across your chosen polishing-abrasive to remove the rust, with oil as a lubricant. If it’s INSIDE, then you can use a popsicle stick with some really fine steel wool, or sandpaper, to try and sand out the rust on the inside of the spring between the brass liners.

This should remove most of the surface-rust on your knife, while also polishing the blade. Keep in mind that almost all antique pocketknives have CARBON STEEL BLADES. These things rust if you even sneeze at them wrong, so having restored the shine on the blade, or at least, having removed the rust – keep the blades DRY when not in use, to prevent rusting, and clean them immediately after any use involving moisture. A single drop of water is all it takes to get rust growing on these antique blades.

Cleaning Out the Guts!

Antique knives are often CLOGGED with crud! Dust, grit, pocket-lint, hair and all other kinds of CRAP usually ends up jammed up inside these things. To clean it out, open the knife entirely, and using a needle, pin, or other suitable long, thin, sharp object – clean out the grooves and gullies between the washers, the springs and the blades. This can take a while.

Cleaning under the Scales.

On the vast majority of antique pocket-knives, scales are simply riveted or pinned onto the outside of the knife and are largely decorative in purpose. But that’s no reason why they shouldn’t look nice! Loads of gunk and crud can EASILY get BEHIND the scales, between the back of the scales, and the brass liners that make the body of the knife-handle. One way to clean this crud out is to use a pin or needle.

Only do this if you can actually get the needle into the gap between the liner and the scales. If you can, simply stick the needle in and wiggle it around from side to side, up and down, back and forth. This will scrape up all the crap that’s accumulated inside there over the course of DECADES, and sweep it out when you remove the needle.

Don’t be afraid if the scales suddenly POP UP! or even worse – drop off! This is nothing to be worried about. If the scales DO fall off, simply clean them (and the liners) as best as you can (either with tissues, water, oil, or a polishing compound) and them simply pop them back on, over the same rivets that held them in, in the first place. You may need to tap the scales back on to pop them back into place. If the scales are loose – apply some glue to them (or the liners) before reattaching the scales, then simply apply pressure to ensure proper adhesion, wiping away any glue that pops out the sides.

Voila! Nice, clean scales.

Lubricating and Cleaning the Pivots and Springs

When it comes to cleaning and restoring antique or vintage folding pocketknives, this is, almost without a doubt, the one part of the restoration that can take ages. Hours. Days. Even WEEKS, if you want to do it properly!

Loads of gunk builds up inside these knives, just from decades of use, and dust and crud and lint and grime getting into the mechanisms. This can make the knives very, very, VERY stiff. This makes them hard to open, hard to close, the blades pull on your fingernails, they’re painful to use, and even worse – you could CUT yourself if the knife suddenly springs open when you’re fighting with it!

So, how to fix this?

To do this, you’ll need three or four things:

  • A bottle of sewing machine oil (you could use WD-40 as well, but you’ll be using a LOT of lubricant, and WD-40 STINKS after long use, so…it’s not my first choice…)
  • Fine and Ultrafine Sandpaper.
  • Loads of tissue paper or toilet paper, or paper-towels.
  • Cotton-buds/Q-Tips.
  • A needle or pin (optional).

So long as it’s not physically broken or damaged in some way, the main reason why the blades on your folding, antique pocketknife jam, jar and won’t open or close smoothly, is because the knife is DIRTY. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DIRTY. To have a knife that opens and closes smoothly – this DIRT needs to be REMOVED. Dirt causes FRICTION. That’s why your damn knife ain’t workin’ properly! Capiche?

“Can’t you just…I dunno…LUBRICATE IT with OIL?”

…Yeah. But what happens when the oil dries up? You’re right back to square one. To do it properly, the gunk has to be REMOVED.

“Yeah but I don’t have any way of pulling the knife apart. How do I remove this stuff?”

Fear not, young grasshopper!

What you’re gonna do is flood the knife with oil. Then, once the knife pivots and springs are full of oil, you’re going to open and close the blades several times. This wiggling and movement spreads the oil around inside the knife, inside the pivots and springs and hinges, between the blades and liners. It also dislodges any of the crud and gunk trapped inside.

Once you’ve done that – get a paper towel or tissues or whatever – folded up a couple of times, to make an absorbent pad. Place it on a flat surface like a tabletop.

Now, put the knife, spring-side DOWN (blades facing upwards), on top of the paper. Applying as much pressure as you can – rub the knife HARD, back and forth lengthwise across the tissue-paper.

I’ll pause here for a minute, while you recoil in disgust, at the black, oily, gunky brown crud that comes seeping out of your knife…

“But my knife ain’t that dirty!”. Wanna bet? This is what about ten minutes’ cleaning of the back-springs and liners on the stockman, looks like. The black, grimy streaks is all the crud and gunk trapped inside the knife, that the oil managed to dislodge and flush out! You wonder why your knife keeps jamming? THIS IS WHY!!

See all that stuff? That’s what’s inside your knife. That’s the grunk you’re trying to get rid of. That is the stuff that’s causing your knife to jam. Remember that the oil is transparent – so anything that comes out of the knife that is NOT transparent – is grime that’s causing the knife to jam.

Repeat this process as often as you must, until the oil that seeps out onto the tissue-paper is clear and transparent (or as close to transparent as you can get it). That means that the crud between the springs and pivots has finally been removed.

If you have an ultrasonic cleaner – pop the knife in there every now and then, to flush out even MORE gunk. Just remember to DRY it really well once you fish it out of the water.

Finally – you can use sandpaper to sand down the shanks and springs when they’re exposed, to remove any surface-rust or grime, to improve the action of the knife.

To achieve results this way, it can take days, even weeks, before all the crud is removed, but once it is, your knife will open and shut as smoothly as if it were new. No more stopping, jerking, tugging, breaking finger-nails, or risking slicing your fingers off, when opening your knives, ever again! If you haven’t achieved the results you want, that means that the knife is, in all likelihood, still clogged with grime. Keep going and don’t give up on it!

Also, it’s good to repeat this process every now and then (like every few months, if you use the knife regularly) to stop gunk from building up and jamming the blades again. Finally, once the knife is opening and closing nice and smoothly, lubricate the pivots and springs with one last drop of oil, and wipe it down to clean it.

Sharpening the Blades

The final step in restoring your antique or vintage knife, is sharpening the blades! For this, you’ll need a bucket of water, two or three high-quality sharpening stones, a sink, and a towel or tissue-paper. I always recommend leaving the sharpening of your knife to the VERY END. This prevents accidental cuts during the polishing, rust-removal and lubrication stages.

Soak your sharpening stones in your bucket of water for as long as possible (overnight or longer is best) until they’re nice and wet and have soaked up the water (high quality stones are often quite porous). Then rest them on a flat surface (kitchen counter or similar) and start sharpening.

Open one blade at a time, from your knife, and rest it on the flat surface of the stone, raised slightly on the spine, and so that the edge of the blade just kisses the stone. Slide the blade back and forth along the stone, in a wide, oval or figure-eight pattern, adjusting the angle and position of the blade as you go, to sharpen its entire length, including any curves in the blade. Do this as fast as you can without damaging the blade, at least twenty times. Flip the blade over and repeat the process on the other side. If done properly, the blade will slide smoothly along the stone. If it jars or scrapes, then you’ve got the wrong angle!

Once you’ve done twenty or more strokes for each side, remove the blade, wash or wipe it down with the tissues or towel, and then start on the next blade. It can take a while to sharpen a blade successfully (especially if it’s curved) but patience will yield results!

Closing Remarks

Anyway, that just about does it for me. Hopefully these instructions were useful to you in reviving that old pocketknife you found lying around somewhere, and has restored it to being a useful tool yet again! Tinkering with stuff like this is lots of fun and it stops otherwise useful things from being discarded and tossed out. Which in the case of this knife, would’ve been a real shame…

 

Antique Shagreen Leather Wallet (London, 1915).

If you’re anything like me, you probably use your wallet for lots of things. Holding coins, holding cards, holding receipts, holding cash, putting little notes and reminders inside it…and it gets crammed into every pocket, bag, jacket and coat that you’ve ever owned. To say nothing of being dropped, bent, twisted, sat on…and if you’re a real klutz, it might have spent some time rolling around in the washing-machine.

However you treat your wallet, one thing is fairly certain – that you will have many wallets throughout your life. Bifolds, trifolds, ones with clasps, clips, zippers, straps, buckles…even chains! But of all the wallets you’ve ever handled, I’m fairly sure you’ll have never seen one that looks like this…

Antique wallet. London, 1915.

Made of black shagreen leather and with silver mounts to protect the edges, this antique trifold wallet from the second decade of the 1900s, and from the time of the First World War was a flea-market find like almost no-other. Considering that it’s over 100 years old, it’s in absolutely fantastic antique condition. There’s absolutely no damage on it at all, apart from a bit of rub-wear on the leather.

How Do You Know It’s from 1915?

I know, because of the hallmarks stamped on the silver corner-mountings, which protect the leather from damage. They bear London silver hallmarks for 1915. And even without the markings there, a wallet of this style and this configuration was extremely common in the early 20th century. This particular design was popular in the 1890s up to around the 1930s or 40s. This was a time when what people carried in their wallets differed greatly from what we carry today.

The three little slots at the top of the pocket are for holding postage-stamps (left and right), and a ticket-stub (for a streetcar or train) in the middle.

While some things did not change – receipts, cash and perhaps a few coins, other things were very different. For example – how many people keep ticket-stubs in their wallets? Or postage-stamps? Calling-cards? Notebooks and pencils? These differences, caused by the fact that 100 years ago, we were much more a cash-based society, influenced wallet design, and what people would put into them.

How Does it Differ from Modern Wallets?

Well, it has compartments and features that most modern wallets wouldn’t have. A ticket-pocket, pockets for stamps, pockets for calling-cards, and pockets for various denominations of cash, which, when this wallet was made, would’ve been various pound and shilling notes. On top of that, it has an in-built pencil slot, and a matching notebook for taking down notes, reminders and details – another feature not normally found on modern wallets.

One of the protective, hallmarked silver corner-tabs.

Last but not least are the silver mounts, and the silver-plated spring-clasp. These days, wallets are far more utilitarian, and are unlikely to have such decorations, and snap-buttons, tabs and zips, or simple folding-wallets, are far more common and one might daresay, practical, in the 21st century.

Are Wallets Like this Rare?

The (removable) pocketbook, and the original pencil from 1915.

Honestly? Not really. You do see them from time to time in antiques shops and flea-markets. I have seen them made of crocodile skin, leather, shagreen, and mounted in nickel, silver (like this one) and even solid gold. So are they rare? Not especially. But they ARE rare in this condition. After all, who treats their day-to-day wallet with the expectation that someone will buy it secondhand in 100 years’ time?

Interior pockets for cards, cash, receipts etc.

The fact that this thing is basically in ready-to-use condition shows that it has barely ever been used, if at all. Something like that obviously affects its price greatly, and of course, its desirably on the antiques market. In fact I actually sold this wallet while writing this article, after barely advertising it for longer than half a day. Proof that good quality antiques will always find a home somewhere, if you know how to buy them, and how to sell them.