Authenticity is Everything
Do You OWN Research. DON'T Trust TPG Blindly. Details & Dates DO MATTER. KNOW Your Subject.
Hello All. PSA/DNA "Titanic" Underwood and Underwood press photo, date stamped April 19, 1912 (just 4 days after the sinking). Listed for $10,000. Unsold thankfully (I think). Neat, huh? Wow!
Unfortunately, that is obviously the just completed New York Chelsea Piers sitting right out the promenade windows on the left. It has been previously published as such. So...absolutely 100% sister Olympic in NYC, 1911, perhaps her Maiden Voyage. Now, I have been advising authors, researchers, modelers, publishing my own work in this area, dealing to collectors and selling to museums in the UK for only 17 years, but I am fairly certain the point was that Titanic did NOT reach her White Star Line Pier 59 in NY, which is IN this photograph? That negative number just sitting there...this also leads somewhere if one doesn't recognize what is right out the windows... ;) And as I mentioned, it has been published.
This is why I do my own research and why I don't buy if I can't "see" it myself. This is why I believe dates and details are extremely important. Know your subject. Buy with your own eye. Perhaps one can argue the cert is "just" for the print as published and the very incorrect subject title does not come into play... - some sort of "we are just a venue..." or some such nonsense. I think otherwise. Subject must be correct!
Below I have tinted the structures that serve to positively identify New York in green (it was green). This combined with the fact the the image was originally published before Titanic was fitted out (linked below) eliminate any other possibility. You can see these structures in my pier candid above it you look closely. How long it takes to change a database I do not know, but this is something else to remember every time I see those darn stickers:
Photo in question published as Olympic Jan. 1911 & Dec. 1912
And something special for me below - a very rare and literally unique hand-tinted candid photograph taken aboard the Adriatic, which took the very last living Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, back to England with her mother and brother. Her father was lost. She signed this for me just before she died early in 2009. It was among her last autographs. I selected this image deliberately for the content - this would be where she and her mother and brother sat going back home. I like to imagine that is her mother and her looking into the camera seated center (this photo is a bit later - C. 1920). I have never seen anything like it - just common post cards, usually modern reproductions. The rest of these colored images were sold to and published by liner researcher and author Mark Chirnside, whose excellent books and articles I have advised and supplied images for going on many years. His work on Olympic is regarded as superb. Some of the Olympic photographs I identified and authenticated have been published by him. Some came from the same album as the pier photo above. I was contracted to do the color restorations of the Cunard liner Aquitania for his Aquitania: The Ship Beautiful. It was the first time 30 or so true color Kodachrome images from the late 1930's to 1951 have ever been published. A great honor for me.
EDIT TO ADD:
I'm back at home and have more time than I did when I posted. I decided to do the obvious and look for the image online - and it is there, misidentified at several websites. It is common then and now to mistake one for the other. Olympic was much more photographed for obvious reasons, and it was just easier to use the image at hand after the disaster, as in this instance. With a bit more poking (under 3 minutes in all), I just found the image in question online correctly identified as Olympic; originally published in Modern Sanitation, DECEMBER, 1911 vol. 8, No. 12 (Page 446-451) and JANUARY 1912 Vol. 9, No. 1 (Page 12-16).
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on
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Joe, it is not as subjective, you are right. I should have said - in that case, this error is less forgivable!
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Permalink Reply by goodcat on
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very interesting thanks
I certainly didn't realize an authenticator bares no responsibility. That terrible
And I agree that it's PSA/DNA that should be notified. But I also think the seller should be notified as well so they can contact them as well. If they are willing of course. Now it comes down to who will do the honorable thing in light of the evidence
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Permalink Reply by marc e on
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One off my biggest pet prives.They charge for a service but aren't held responsible for it.
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Hi GC, I have often thought of providing a sticker removal service GC. "Give me your poor, stickered, secretarial and forged masses..." and let me perform some experiments. But, I do not have the time for this right now. I should reasonably soon.
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Miss Cleo has as much chande as being correct as a tap. So does betting on black or red on roulette .50/50
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Hi John, as you know, one can do the homework and choose to bet on themselves as well. That is always an option, if one is willing to take it on.
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Isn't the date stamped wrong as well? (7 days AFTER it sank)
Or am I reading that wrong?
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Hey GC, it was for publication in the newspapers as the Reverse stamps indicate, so the date would be after the sinking, which was on the morning of the 15th. It is my mistake saying "7 days" and I am sorry. I will correct it in the main post.
In New York at that time, to quote an old and much missed friend, "as women leaving the theaters swooned at the news", the boy intercepting confirmation of the sinking by Olympic, and also the radio communications between the Cunard rescue vessel Carpathia and Cape race was none other than...a very young David Sarnoff.
This is especially interesting for me, as Sarnoff was later involved with the so-called "introduction" of television at the 1939 New York World's Fair. TV has been displayed since 1925 and we had regular programming in NY since 1931, albeit to a limited audience.
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gotchya thx
and a little added information for our reading pleasure I see haha
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Good Heavens Good Cat! I didn't mention my friend! That was John Maxtone-Graham, quoted (roughly) from some lecture or film. I knew him for 20 years or more. He wrote one of two the books that got me into this, The Only Way to Cross, which I HIGHLY recommend. Many years later, in his brownstone on the West Side just a few blocks from the Dakota, after tea, he gifted to me the print of "my" Mauretania which he obtained and published in that book that sparked me, showing her on the morning of her Maiden Voyage in 1907. Full circle. And a while after that, I had him sign it to me. When I can dig it out, I will post it. He had beautiful handwriting, and was known for his red fountain pen (and Cunard-orange sox!).
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I had to dig this up. This is John M-G and I at his 80th birthday celebration held by Cunard aboard the Queen Mary 2 in 2009. We are in the Todd English. I was seated at the "Table Mauretania". This was after cocktails and much Vueve Clicquot served with white gloves in the Commodore Club - very tight. The photographer for the New York Times was shooting up from the floor! There were Cunard reps there to give us personal tours of the vessel - it was among my best times! I also signed and collected sigs on this day. (He was 6 foot something, I am small but not THAT small!)
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