A Century at Sea: Celebrating the Legendary Sailing Ship Success: Rare poster

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Rare poster - The Success at Pittsburgh, 1919

One of the benefits of giving talks on the Success is the many wonderful people you meet and the stories they have to tell. After my talk for the Port Clinton Museum here a week ago today, Dave, one of the folks who came to watch approached me holding a large framed picture. When I saw it I almost did a back flip! (Which would be practically a physical impossibility at my age, but I digress.) The picture in the frame was actually an original posted on thick poster board adverting the appearance of the Success in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when the ship was there in 1919. Dave had bought it off an antique dealer friend of his some 25 years ago here in northern Ohio. Dave was kind enough to let me come out to his house this past week and photograph it.

Part of what makes the poster so unique is that it shows how the manager of the ship cleverly adapted the ship's exhibition to the current place and time. As the poster indicates, the ship was also doing duty at that time as a 'U.S. Marine Recruiting Station' and that the showing of the ship was a 'Benefit for the Fatherless Children of France.' This was a brilliant strategy, meant to dispel any suggestion that the exhibition was intended to exploit the people in time of war. This strategy was employed to good effect during the war years, 1917 through 1919, while the ship was touring the inland rivers.

Dave and I spent a most pleasant afternoon talking about the Success, but also (and mostly) about the Civil War. His personal collection of Civil War memorabilia was most impressive. Mostly, though, I felt as though I'd found a friend, and that's worth far more than any musket, or poster.

1 comment:

scott davidsonOctober 29, 2012 at 9:39 AM
"I saw this picture in the school library where someone's face was all made up of fruits and vegetables," my son said. "Would be cool to have one of those in my room."
He and I searched for art about "vegetables" in wahooart.com and immediately found this one, http://en.wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/OPRA/BRUE-8BWLKG, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, which fits the bill to the nearest pear.

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A History of the Success

Lauched in 1840 at Natmaw on the coast of Tenasserim, in what is now Myanmar, for Calcutta owners, this teakwood vessel was as fine an example of native shipbuilding as any ever seen. Her dimensions were: 117'3"×26'8"×22'5", she displaced 621 tons, and was equipped with two decks, forecastle and poop, and square stern with single quarter galleries. She was given a scroll figurehead, to be replaced two years later by the female bust that became the hallmark of this fine vessel. The first 50 years of her remarkable career saw her performing in a wide variety of roles: trader, emigrant ship, coolie transport, and penal hulk. It was in this latter role that she gained much notoriety as one of five penal hulks anchored off Willliamstown near Melbourne, Australia, during the 1850s. During the remainder of her career she was towed from port to port as a show ship. During this period a succession of owners displayed her as a sort-of convict ship museum and with increasingly greater misrepresentation of her true history. After a successful exhibition tour of the British Isles from 1895 to 1911, she sailed to Boston. For the next 30 years she toured both coasts, the inland rivers, and the Great Lakes. During this time official representatives for Australia quietly - and unsuccessfully - petitioned the U.S. to have the exhibit stopped. Meanwhile, many millions took advantage of the opportunity to see this unique attraction. By the time she met with her rather sad end by fire in 1946, near Port Clinton, Ohio, she had earned a reputation, somewhat unfairly, as a hoax. In truth, the world lost the chance to preserve a superb example of 19th century shipbuilding. If you have any information about this vessel, please contact me at nauticalguy@hotmail.com. Also, visit my companion website at ShipSuccess.com.