Join Education Director Aimee Bachari for a chat with Curator Jordan Berson about the fascinating Elmo N. Pickerill Collection at the Steamship Historical Society of America. Elmo Neale Pickerill served as Chief Radio Operator aboard the world’s biggest ocean liner SS LEVIATHAN for most of the ship’s career. Pickerill had already made a name for himself in the fields of aviation and wireless radiotelegraphy, and he had been to sea. He was known to be an accomplished and daring innovator with nearly 20 years of experience under his belt. The Wright brothers taught Elmo Pickerill to fly and he had also studied radio with Guglielmo Marconi.

Among his accomplishments, Elmo Pickerill was credited with making the first ever airplane-to-ground radio communication, while solo-piloting a biplane in August 1910. During the flight Pickerill was said to have tapped out Morse code that was received by two stations on the beach, three different steamships, and a radio station on a New York City rooftop. This type of historic feat should have made front page headlines worldwide. But the event didn’t get any such publicity, and today due to this absence of period news reports, some historians have suggested that Pickerill fabricated the story for the purpose of self-promotion.

A large volume of the papers and mementos he saved from this time period were donated to Steamship Historical Society in 1968 when he passed away. These include but are not limited to: signage from LEVIATHAN’s radio room, Pickerill’s badge, epaulettes, certification cards, 137 crew passes, 168 log abstract cards, photographs, souvenir-type objects, silver, correspondence, clippings, memoranda, books, and a very large 48-star American flag that purportedly was flown aboard LEVIATHAN.

Two groupings of materials within that donation stand out as exceptional records of what it was like to work in the radio department of an early 20th century ocean liner. The first grouping is Pickerill’s photographs, that he kept in a large bound album. The second grouping are documents stored inside of two file-boxes stamped “SS LEVIATHAN” on their spines. These boxes were apparently saved from the radio room by Pickerill when the ship went out of service for the last time in 1934. Work has been going on at SSHSA to more thoroughly document and understand the contents of these boxes.

Learn more about this and other collections at the Steamship Historical Society at sshsa.org/collections.

On September 12, 1942, U-156 commander Werner Hartenstein torpedoed the RMS Laconia, a former Cunard White Star liner that was converted into a troopship during the war. On board that day, traveling from South Africa to England, were 1,500 Italian prisoners of war, military personnel, and women and children.

After the attack, and realizing there were German allies and women and children on board, Hartenstein called other U-boats to aid in the rescue. What happens next when he decides to request assistance from the Allies would change the course of the war, leading to even more casualties.

Today you'll hear an episode on the Laconia Incident by History Daily with Host Lindsay Graham. With new episodes every weekday, you'll hear the fascinating stories of what happened "on this day" in history. Like our podcast, each episode is 20 minutes or under, so you can stand and finish a show whenever you want a quick dose of history. You can find them by searching History Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

Join SSHSA Education Director Aimee Bachari and the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes Archivist Mark Sprang to reflect on the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the EDMUND FITZGERALD. The two discuss what makes this shipwreck so popular, the changes that came about after, and the material related to "Big Fitz" that you can find in Mark's archive and collections at Bowling Green State University. Most importantly, the Steamship Historical Society remembers the 29 men that were lost that fateful day when the EDMUND FITZGERALD went down on November 10, 1975, just 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan. To see the film version of this interview with historic images, video, and documents from both Mark's archive and the SSHSA archive along with materials in the public domain, visit https://youtu.be/_Jk-prcwotU?si=o2fRH81OqsbfTmKw.

The main purpose of the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes (HCGL) is to collect, preserve, and make available historical materials documenting the Great Lakes region and connecting waterways. The HCGL consists of manuscript and archival materials (more than 2,000 cubic feet and over 600 collections); books, pamphlets, and periodicals; naval architectural drawings, maps, and charts; and photographs. Finding aids are available for processed manuscript collections and are searchable. Learn more at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/cac/collections/hcgl.html.

To learn more about SHIPS visit shiphistory.org/ships.

Subscribe to our channel @ShipHistory

Learn more about SSHSA at www.sshsa.org.

Check out our education program at www.shiphistory.org/education.