#PE96
Ca. 1920s
14 loose real photo postcards, each ca. 13 x 8 cm (5 ¼ x 3 ¼ in). One image with period pencil caption on verso. Photos mildly faded faded, but overall a good collection of interesting photos.
An interesting and lively collection of real photo postcards showing a line-crossing ceremony aboard a US Navy ship, possibly USS Wisconsin, in the 1920s. Line-crossing ceremonies, commemorating one’s first crossing of the equator, date back to at least the 18th century.
“Perhaps one of the best known and longest enduring traditions is the initiation ceremony of ‘Crossing the line’ or ‘Sea Baptism’, which takes place when a ship crosses the equator. The first recorded descriptions are from around 400 years ago and its origins remain hazy. There are some suggestions that it formed an important test to ensure the men you were sailing with, and thus dependent upon, were able seafarers. A different interpretation is much more steeped in superstition – appeasing Neptune the god of the sea before ‘crossing the line’. As with any long-standing tradition, there are a wide variety of interpretations; however, some fundamentals stay the same. The sailors who have not yet crossed the equator before must be tried before the court of Neptune, Roman god of the sea, and be shown to be worthy seafarers.” (Royal Museums Greenwich).
The postcards show crew members in costumes (King Neptune, the leader of the ceremony, and his retinue; some men hold kits or signs reading “Painful Parker,” “Neptune Barber Shop,” etc.), those being initiated sitting on a wooden gangway above a makeshift pool (made from a sail) and being sprayed in the face, and those being initiated falling into the pool (likely the “equatorial baptism”). Some postcards also show officers and sailors in uniform, attending as the audience.
Overall, a very interesting collection of photographs showing a US Navy line-crossing ceremony in the 1920s.
