R.M.S. Berengaria

The R.M.S. Berengaria was originally built for the Hamburg-Amerika Line as the Imperator. At the end of World War I, she was seized by the America Navy and given to the British as reparation for sinking of the Lusitania. The ship was then sold to the Cunard line.

The Hall Genealogy website has lots of information on the ship along with many photos of the interior.

City of Cleveland

Here is the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Line's City of Cleveland by day and by night. The side wheel steamer was destroyed by fire shortly after it was built in 1907, but was rebuilt again by 1908. The Great Lakes steamer transported passengers between Detroit and Cleveland.

Here are the backs of the cards. I posted the second one first, because it has a message and some interesting cancellation stamps. The sender seems to have thought that a one cent was sufficient postage for a card from Detroit, Michigan to Mainz, Germany. It looks like it arrived postage due. I don't know enough about postal history though to be able to tell you why the amount stamped on it is 10 centimes instead of an amount in German pfennigs.

Here's the back of the first card.

Kashima Maru

The S.S. Kashima Maru was a Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) trans-Pacific passenger liner. This photo is from around 1920. NYK produced many very beautiful ship postcards.

In World War II, the Kashima Maru, then being used as a transport ship, was torpedoed and sunk by the USS Bonefish in 1943.

P.S. This post was being inundated with spam comments for some reason, so I have closed it to new comments. My apologies.

U.S. Battleship Oregon

The USS Oregon was built in San Francisco and launched in 1893. I have delayed this post for a long time because I intended to go down to Tom McCall Waterfront Park here in Portland and take a photo of the mast, which is on display there as a memorial. Somehow I have never gotten around to doing it, but there's a perfectly good photo on Wikipedia anyway.

Here' s the card.

And here's the Wikipedia photo of the mast as it looks today.

Source: Wikipedia

The card was sent by D.A. Westcott of Victoria, B.C. to Miss Kate Goff of Waterford, Pennsylvania. The choice of a battleship postcard seems to be intentional. Here's the back of the card with its wonderful message.

Victoria, B.C. Canada

Kate - Take care of yourself. Don't let any body walk on you.

D.A. Westcott

May 23, 1908.

Sailing To Fiji

For a change of pace, this is not a postcard. Instead, it a 9" by 12" menu from the Matson Lines' S.S. Lurline, with the front cover painted by Louis Macouillard.  That would have been a fun adventure.

Here are the choices you would have had for dinner on Tuesday, March 29, 1960. In many ways, this seems like an adventurous menu for 1960, but there are also the classic standbys such as Sanka, Rye-Krisp, and chilled hearts of celery.

The wine list lacks the descriptive language we use today - nothing about forward fruit, hints of tobacco, vanilla etc.

Clyde Steamship Lines and S.O.S.

When the S.S. Arapahoe broke her tail shaft off the North Carolina Coast in 1909, the focus of the New York Times news story was not so much the damage done to the ship, but the manner in which the ship signaled she was in distress. The wireless operator on board sent out an S.O.S signal. Although that would not seem remarkable today, it was then, because the recognized signal for help had been C.Q.D., (a general signal followed by D for Distress.)  It did not stand for Come Quick Danger, just as S.O.S. did not stand for Save Our Souls or Save Our Ship, but it is a convenient way to remember them anyway. The Arapahoe's call for help was the first recorded use of the S.O.S. signal in the United States.

The use of S.O.S. was adopted by the International Wire Congress in Berlin in 1906, but it took awhile for it to be widely adopted. In 1912, the Titanic initially sent C.Q.D. messages before interspersing them with S.O.S. signals.

Here is a card showing another Clyde Line Steamer. Apparently the Mohawk, Cherokee, and Seminole, all built in 1925-26, looked the same, so this card could be any one of them. Björn Larsson's website, Maritime Timetables Images, shows some great interior views too and reports that:

The Mohawk was sunk in 1935 following a collision with a freighter off New Jersey,
while the Cherokee, serving as a troop transport, was torpedoed and sunk in 1942.
Both the Seminole and Algonquin were hospital ships during WW2 and survived to be scrapped during the 1950s. 

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order.

The second card was sent to Mrs. J.J. Burwell of Lumberton, New Jersey in 1929 from Jacksonville, Florida. The message reads:

Does this look like the vessel on which we took our trip?

John

Think Possibly I may get back by Friday eve next.

SS Tenyo Maru

The SS Tenyo Maru was a Japanese passenger liner built in 1908. At that time it was the heaviest ship launched in Japan or in the Pacific Ocean. As far as I can tell, this is the first of three ships named the Tenyo Maru. There was another passenger liner that was eventually requisitioned for World War II, and there was (is) also a fishing vessel of the same name that was involved in a nasty oil spill.

The Ships list. com has this to say about the Tenyo Maru:
13,454 gross tons, length 558ft x beam 61.9ft, two funnels, two masts, triple screw, speed 20 knots, accommodation for 275-1st, 54-2nd and 800-3rd class passengers. Built 1908 by Mitsubishi Dockyard & Eng. Works, Nagasaki for Toyo Kisen K.K., Tokyo and used on Hong Kong - Yokohama - San Francisco passenger services. In 1926 the company became Nippon Yusen K.K., Tokyo. 1930 laid up, 1933 scrapped in Japan.
 
This postcard shows the reading room with its amazing furnishings. The ship is initially reported to have had a room where Chinese passengers could go to smoke opium. There must have been a limit to the amount though. Other reports I have seen (including one in the Overland Monthly, Volume 58, 1911) refer to opium being seized in searches of ocean liners coming from the Orient. In one seizure in 1911, eighty tins of opium were taken from the Tenyo Maru.

Source

My favorite story is from Time Magazine, 1929, which details the plight of Mrs. Sui'e Ying Kao, wife of the Chinese Vice Consul at San Francisco, who imported a large quantity of opium on the Tenyo Maru, thinking that she had diplomatic immunity. Alas, the customs agents disagreed. They confiscated $600,000 worth of opium (1929 prices!) from Mrs. Kao. In any case, the reading room shown above seems like the perfect place for smoking opium.


Here's the back of the card.