86 replies to this topic

[Lancashire Fusilier]

centurion, on 31 March 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

AFAIK it only visited Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal in 1917 and about a year later revisited Toronto.

The attached photograph has a notation which looks like " Hamilton Ontario " and gives a date of November (11) 1918?
If correct, this would tie in with Britannia's return visit to Toronto in 1918.

Attached Files

•  Britannia C1.jpg   16.3K   0 downloads

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Another photograph of Britannia on her Canadian tour.

Attached Files

•  Britannia in Canada.jpg   30.31K   0 downloads

[Andrew Upton]

centurion, on 01 April 2012 - 05:09 PM, said:

Wrong again I'm afraid. Google can be a great gold mine but you do need to define the ore to remove the fools gold and other dross before posting from it which in turn often requires knowing something about the subject...


Howitzer-Hero.jpg

British soldiers at Heroland with Trench  Howitzer

I do feel the need to point out that at least two of those soldiers in that picture are very definitely Canadian soldiers, and not British soldiers...

[centurion]

Lancashire Fusilier, on 02 April 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

Another photograph of Britannia on her Canadian tour.

Only one word CRAP that's Egbert in Luton. I would have thought you might have noticed that its a male tank now stop hijacking the thread by posting rubbish.

Lancashire Fusilier, on 02 April 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

The attached photograph has a notation which looks like " Hamilton Ontario " and gives a date of November (11) 1918?
If correct, this would tie in with Britannia's return visit to Toronto in 1918.

Its from the 1917 tour

[centurion]

Andrew Upton, on 02 April 2012 - 04:35 PM, said:

I do feel the need to point out that at least two of those soldiers in that picture are very definitely Canadian soldiers, and not British soldiers...

As far as the organisers were concerned at the time Canadian soldiers were British soldiers

[Lancashire Fusilier]

centurion, on 02 April 2012 - 04:45 PM, said:

Only one word CRAP that's Egbert in Luton. I would have thought you might have noticed that its a male tank now stop hijacking the thread by posting rubbish.

I do not think that enthusiastic posting is hijacking anything, and threads are open to each and every member. If you do not want other members to post material in good faith to your thread, then do not open threads yourself.
The caption on the photograph said ' Britannia on her Canadian Tour ', if it is wrong, I shall gladly check your statement about Luton, and if correct, I shall revise the post, simple as that.
With regard to the CRAP, at least I posted a photograph, I am still waiting to hear back from you regarding the mythical and imaginary South Carolina tank satellite " housing " you invented, that just happened to be 200 miles from Camp Polk !!
It seems that if you are caught out in a mistake, you invent an answer to cover up your mistake, as you did with your real blooper about the Canadians being British ! Why not just say, opps! sorry yes they are Canadians ? There is no shame in admitting to a mistake, I do it all the time.
Your criticism of the Hero Land posters was also inaccurate and misleading. Those posters were authentic, and were part of a series of posters that were produced for the Hero Land event. The poster you produced was just one of several that were produced by those exhibiting at the Hero Land exposition/exhibition ( copies attached ). Yet you attempted to dismiss the posters I posted as irrelevant, and yet they were just as authentic and relevant as the poster you posted. You seem to have a very biased and selective opinion of anything that did not originate from yourself.
For the record, here is an unbiased and exceedingly more accurate version of the Hero Land event and the posters produced for the event.

" Hero Land
Working with Hoover's poster collection, I came across a poster with a striking image of a bazaar and "Hero Land" in a huge typeface reminiscent of a movie poster, illustrated by J. Carl Mueller. As I noticed similar posters, I began to wonder, what was Hero Land?

Assuming from the poster that it was a movie, I conducted a Google search. Finding Hero Land in a New York Times index from 1918, I went to the New York Times historical full-text database (most public and academic libraries have this newspaper database available from ProQuest).

I discovered that Hero Land was a World War I Allied war relief benefit bazaar held in New York at the Grand Central Palace from November 24 to December 12, 1917. And what a benefit it was!

As an advertisement in the November 24, 1917, New York Times noted: "Hero Land is a 16-Day Military Pageant, Theatrical Entertainment, Oriental Wonderland and Charity Mart; Devised, Created, Managed, and Financed by One Hundred Approved National War Relief Organization for the Benefit of American and Allied Relief."

Sounding more like a world's fair than a relief benefit, "the object … is to bring home in vivid pictures to the American people some of the actualities of warfare as carried on by the Germans."

The Grand Central Palace itself was transformed. The first floor included a grand ballroom modeled after Versailles and the third floor was given over to a re-creation of the streets of Baghdad. There were reproductions of forts, trench lines, bomb shelters, and battlefields, including a British tank and a German submarine. There was also entertainment: five moving picture theaters, an ice skating rink, restaurants, bands, dancing, and shopping, as well as special events every evening.

More than 250,000 people attended Hero Land, creating a net profit of $571,438 (about $10.3 million today) to be dispersed among one hundred war relief charities, including the Commission for Relief in Belgium, whose records are also at Hoover. Hero Land was surely an amazing sight to behold, as was my discovery of its beautiful publicity posters among Hoover's trove of more than 100,000 posters. "


It is a great shame that you seem to be so mean spirited, self-opinionated, ill-tempered, and intolerant, as despite those unfortunate personality traits, you do seem knowledgeable on many WW1 subjects.
Needless to say, despite your attempts to stifle competition, I shall continue to post to this particular thread, and any others that take my interest.
Regards,
LF

Attached Files

•  Hero Land Poster new 1.jpg   28.5K   0 downloads
•  Hero Land Poster new 2.jpg   24.9K   0 downloads

[Lancashire Fusilier]

centurion, on 02 April 2012 - 04:45 PM, said:

Its from the 1917 tour

How can you tell ? and does the photograph have a date on it of 1918, can you make the date out ?

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Britannia in a parade down Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, USA., as part of her US tour.
( photograph reversed )
LF.

Attached Files

•  Brittania in Chicago.jpg   65.67K   0 downloads

[Lancashire Fusilier]

Not sure when, not sure where, but it is Britannia on a freezing cold day during her US. tour.

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•  Britannia C3.jpg   29.02K   0 downloads

[centurion]

Lancashire Fusilier, on 02 April 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

I do not think that enthusiastic posting is hijacking anything, and threads are open to each and every member. If you do not want other members to post material in good faith to your thread, then do not open threads yourself.
The caption on the photograph said ' Britannia on her Canadian Tour ', if it is wrong, I shall gladly check your statement about Luton, and if correct, I shall revise the post, simple as that.
With regard to the CRAP, at least I posted a photograph, I am still waiting to hear back from you regarding the mythical and imaginary South Carolina tank satellite " housing " you invented, that just happened to be 200 miles from Camp Polk !!
It seems that if you are caught out in a mistake, you invent an answer to cover up your mistake, as you did with your real blooper about the Canadians being British ! There is no shame in admitting to a mistake, I do it all the time.
Your criticism of the Hero Land posters was also inaccurate and misleading. Those posters were authentic, and were part of a series of posters that were produced for the Hero Land event. The poster you produced was just one of several that were produced by those exhibiting at the Hero Land exposition/exhibition ( copies attached ). Yet you attempted to dismiss the posters I posted as irrelevant, and yet they were just as authentic and relevant as the poster you posted. You seem to have a very biased and selective opinion of anything that did not originate from yourself.
For the record, here is an unbiased and exceedingly more accurate version of the Hero Land event and the posters produced for the event.

" Hero Land
Working with Hoover's poster collection, I came across a poster with a striking image of a bazaar and "Hero Land" in a huge typeface reminiscent of a movie poster, illustrated by J. Carl Mueller. As I noticed similar posters, I began to wonder, what was Hero Land?

Assuming from the poster that it was a movie, I conducted a Google search. Finding Hero Land in a New York Times index from 1918, I went to the New York Times historical full-text database (most public and academic libraries have this newspaper database available from ProQuest).

I discovered that Hero Land was a World War I Allied war relief benefit bazaar held in New York at the Grand Central Palace from November 24 to December 12, 1917. And what a benefit it was!

As an advertisement in the November 24, 1917, New York Times noted: "Hero Land is a 16-Day Military Pageant, Theatrical Entertainment, Oriental Wonderland and Charity Mart; Devised, Created, Managed, and Financed by One Hundred Approved National War Relief Organization for the Benefit of American and Allied Relief."

Sounding more like a world's fair than a relief benefit, "the object … is to bring home in vivid pictures to the American people some of the actualities of warfare as carried on by the Germans."

The Grand Central Palace itself was transformed. The first floor included a grand ballroom modeled after Versailles and the third floor was given over to a re-creation of the streets of Baghdad. There were reproductions of forts, trench lines, bomb shelters, and battlefields, including a British tank and a German submarine. There was also entertainment: five moving picture theaters, an ice skating rink, restaurants, bands, dancing, and shopping, as well as special events every evening.

More than 250,000 people attended Hero Land, creating a net profit of $571,438 (about $10.3 million today) to be dispersed among one hundred war relief charities, including the Commission for Relief in Belgium, whose records are also at Hoover. Hero Land was surely an amazing sight to behold, as was my discovery of its beautiful publicity posters among Hoover's trove of more than 100,000 posters. "


It is a great shame that you seem to be so mean spirited, self-opinionated, ill-tempered, and intolerant, as despite those unfortunate personality traits, you do seem knowledgeable on many WW1 subjects.
Needless to say, despite your attempts to stifle competition, I shall continue to post to this particular thread, and any others that take my interest.
Regards,
LF

If you believe everything you see written on postcards etc. you are likely to lead a bemused life. Do a simple credibility check first. The tank in the photo is male - Britannia was female. The tank in the photo has the holed sponson that was the hall mark of Egbert. This shot has appeared in many places but the buildings are identifiable as Luton in 1918. The people around the tank with "Canadian/American" style hats are in fact British boy scouts. The photo originally appeared in a Luton newspaper.


Similarly the text on the "Hamilton " card is probably spurious. The visit to Hamilton in 1917 is well documented including all the other activities (fly by by RFC training flights etc). The photo shows Haig on the roof (i've had a copy for some time and been able to analyse it for some time). Documentation shows that by November 1918 Haig had left North America. I have a detailed time table for most of Britannia's activities and there was no time for her to have visited Hamilton between leaving New York for the last time and arriving in Toronto in 1918.  The tank was due to take part in an exhibition in Cleveland in the first week of November but never arrived (Cleveland had to use a dummy). The photo must have been taken some time after June 1918 but, given the tanks movements, is  unlikely to have been taken in Hamilton. Local postcard producers in North America and Britain often used stock shots and added local captions.

With regard to Polk. There was some dispute in the US Army over the future control of tank training. There was a clique that wanted to keep this away from Eisenhower. A new camp was opened to do the training. This would be a satellite of an artillery training establishment in Pennsylvania in that it would be administered from there but not local to it (being in a different state). However before it could become in any way operational  command of it was transferred to Camp Polk and it became an administrative satellite of that camp. Then Camp Polk closed and all the tanks were transferred to Camp Colt (which is what Eisenhower had wanted in the first place). A complex series of  events in the course of a month which I am still examining.

If you'd wanted to know about Heroland I could have told you but you appear too arrogant to ask. It would have saved you doing duplicate research after you made your previous post. I could have also mentioned how the British Empire exhibit was treated as simply British. Shame you didn't bother to do this.

I opened this thread, as I  said in the first post, to give a number of people who asked at the conference a heads up on my project. I didn't expect to find lots of old stuff posted to it. I think I'll close it now.

[4thGordons]

Carmania, on 01 April 2012 - 06:43 PM, said:

According to a contemporary newspaper report Britannia was in St Louis at least on Saturday 11 May 1918 and Sunday the 12 May. It became stuck in the mud of the River des Peres and was there for 20 hours before it was towed out by three trucks on the Sunday.

Hi Aled,
Excellent stuff
I shall see if I can find anything in the local newspapers that may not be online.
Was this in the St Louis Post or.....
This certainly narrows it a little as a starting point
Chris

[Alan Curragh]

Closed by request of the thread starter