Transportation - Overview
Americans have always been a people on the move—on rails, roads, and waterways (for travel through the air, visit the National Air and Space Museum). In the transportation collections, railroad objects range from tools, tracks, and many train models to the massive 1401, a 280-ton locomotive built in 1926. Road vehicles include coaches, buggies, wagons, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and automobiles—from the days before the Model T to modern race cars. The accessories of travel are part of the collections, too, from streetlights, gas pumps, and traffic signals to goggles and overcoats.
In the maritime collections, more than 7,000 design plans and scores of ship models show the evolution of sailing ships and other vessels. Other items range from scrimshaw, photographs, and marine paintings to life jackets from the Titanic.
"Transportation - Overview" showing 46 items.
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Ship Model, Susan Constant
- Description
- On April 26, 1607, three passenger ships reached the shores of modern-day Virginia. The largest, named the Susan Constant, carried 54 members of a 105-man colonization mission. Arriving thirteen years before the Pilgrims landed at what is now Plymouth, Mass., this group of Englishmen came in search of gold and glory in the New World under the direction of the Virginia Company. Their founding of Jamestown began a long and checkered chapter in American colonial history.
- Built in 1605 near London, and leased from Dapper, Wheatley, Colthurst and Partners, the Susan Constant was barely a year old when the Jamestown passengers spotted land near Cape Henry at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, the journey from London to Virginia took approximately four and a half months. Following its departure on December 20, 1606, the Susan Constant spent six weeks floating idly in the English Channel, waiting for the right winds to carry the passengers to their new lives. Unlike the colonists, the Susan Constant did not stay in Virginia, but sailed back to England filled with timber.
- In the past, there has been some confusion over whether the ship’s name was Susan or Sarah Constant. According to a 1625 manuscript transcribed by Rev. Samuel Purchas, when discussing the journey of the Jamestown settlers, His Majesty King James I’s Council on Virginia referred to a ship named Sarah Constant. However, multiple accounts given by the original colonists, as well as the leasing companies, indentify the ship as Susan Constant or, more simply, Susan. No record of a Sarah Constant has ever been found in sources from the time period, and historians have since chalked the confusion up to a clerical error on the part of the Council.
- In 1991, the Commonwealth of Virginia financed a $2.14 million life-sized reproduction of the Susan Constant. The ship took a short tour of the Chesapeake Bay area in 2007 as part of Jamestown’s 400th Anniversary Celebration, and can now be seen in the Jamestown Settlement National Park.
- This model of the Susan Constant was given to the Smithsonian in 1998 as a gift from its builder, John W. Chapman.
- Date made
- 1998
- Susan Constant departed London
- 1606-12-20
- Susan Constant arrived in Jamestown
- 1607-04-26
- life-size reproduction was built
- 1991
- manuscript transcribed discussing ship and voyage
- 1625
- captained the ship
- Newport, Christopher
- leased the ship
- Dapper, Wheatley, Colthurst and Partners
- transcribed a manuscript
- Purchas, Samuel
- maker
- Chapman, John W.
- ID Number
- 1998.0227.01
- accession number
- 1998.0227
- catalog number
- 1998.0227.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Whaleship Skimmer
- Description
- After a whale’s blubber was melted down into oil in the try-pots, a few solids, like skin and gristle, remained floating on the surface of the oil. These were removed with a skimmer. The tool’s long handle helped keep the crew from being burned or splashed with hot oil. The leftover oily pieces of flesh, or “fritters,” were then tossed under the pots and recycled into fuel to keep the fires burning.
- date made
- 1880s
- ID Number
- 1990.0018.066
- catalog number
- 1990.0018.066
- accession number
- 1990.0018
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Whaler's Chopper
- Description
- After the whale skin and attached fat, together called blubber, was hauled aboard the mother ship for processing in large strips, it was chopped into small pieces with different tools to expose more surface area to the melting heat of the boiling oil in the try-pot. This chopper was one of those tools.
- ID Number
- 1990.0018.085
- catalog number
- 1990.0018.085
- accession number
- 1990.0018
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Japanese Immigrant’s Trunk
- Description
- For decades, Hawai`i was a primary destination for Japanese immigrants. The cane sugar industry, which dominated Hawaiian life from the 1850s to the 1950s, recruited tens of thousands of laborers from Japan. Immigration increased after the United States annexed Hawai`i in 1898, and continued despite restrictions on Japanese immigration to the U.S. mainland. Japanese workers endured severe and unequal conditions in Hawai`i, which was controlled by white American business interests. Still, Japanese immigrants established a strong and lasting community that supported their families and maintained their cultural traditions.
- The need for cheap labor forced plantations to recruit contract workers from China, Japan, Korea, the Pacific Islands, and the Philippines, as well as Puerto Rico, Europe, and California. The unique racial and ethnic mix in contemporary Hawai`i is due to this history. The largest group of workers came from Japan. Unlike other Asian groups, the Japanese included significant numbers and percentages of women workers.
- This trunk belonged to Kumataro Sugimoto, who immigrated to Hawai`i from Kumamoto, Japan, about 1902. After hearing stories of quick wealth, Kumataro left for Hawai`i to seek his fortune. Later, he brought his sons to help him on the plantation. One of his sons, Kichizo, married an American-born Japanese woman and started a family in Hawai`i. Inscriptions on the trunk include Sugimoto, the family name, and Hawai`i, the destination. This was a common practice for identification on any long voyage. This trunk or toronko, made of leather and paper, carried kimono and other personal belongings. Immigrants also carried Yanagi-gori, suitcases made of willow branches, and others made of bamboo and rattan, as well as cloth bags.
- Date made
- late 1800s
- cane sugar industry in Hawaii
- 1850-1950s
- owner immigrated from Japan to Hawaii
- 1902
- trunk owner
- Sugimoto, Kumataro
- ID Number
- 2005.0132.17
- catalog number
- 2005.0132.17
- accession number
- 2005.0132
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sheet Music, "Ol' Man River"
- Description
- This sheet music contains the music and lyrics for “Ol’ Man River,” a song from the 1927 Broadway musical Show Boat, one of the masterpieces of American theater. Sheet music was a popular means of dispersing songs throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the widespread availability of phonographs and radio shifted the music industry’s focus to recorded songs. With sheet music such as this, people would typically gather around a piano and sing, bringing the stories and sounds of the theater into parlors across the country.
- Show Boat is regarded as the first American musical to depart from the genre’s traditional light comedy by featuring serious dramatic complexities, notably race relations among people along the Mississippi River. Show Boat was adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern from the 1926 novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Ferber. Both the book and the musical mix humor with nostalgia as they recall the disappearing culture of the show boat. A novelty form of performance in the 1800s, a show boat was a floating theater that featured melodramas, musical acts, dancing, and vaudeville as it traveled along American waterways such as the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Ohio Rivers. The popularity of showboats declined in the 20th century as the country moved from the rivers to the roads and motion pictures replaced the stage as the main form of entertainment. The musical Show Boat recalls this era, as it follows the Cotton Blossom and the people the boat affects while traveling up and down the Mississippi.
- Although the main focus of the musical is on the cast and crew of the Cotton Blossom, the most interesting and memorable character is Joe, the black dock worker who tells the story of hardships suffered by African Americans through the song “Ol’ Man River.” Juxtaposed against the white merrymakers on board—Show Boat was the first integrated musical, featuring actors of both races on stage and in the chorus— Joe totes bales of cotton and sings about his struggles. The lyrics “Ah gets weary an’ sick of tryin’, Ahm tired of livin’ an’ skeered of dyin’,” reflect the somber, yet resigned tone of the song. Just as with the problems of all the characters, the relentless Mississippi pays no heed, for the river just keeps rolling along.
- The African American characters in Show Boat have been viewed by some as offensive caricatures that portray black people as servants. Animosity toward the play has been demonstrated in various ways. For instance, Paul Robeson, the famous singer for whom the part of Joe was originally written, altered the lyrics in his own recordings of “Ol’ Man River,” removing certain words and the stereotypical dialect. Protests are frequently staged against revivals of the musical, although some performing arts critics and historians point to the treatment of a mixed-race marriage in the play, Hammerstein’s own desire for tolerance, and the fact that portrayal of racist stereotypes in modern American theater employed is usually not to condone racism, but to satirize and condemn the mindsets that perpetuate it.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- "Show Boat" debuted on Broadway
- 1927
- sheet music popular
- 19th and early 20th centuries
- Edna Ferber authored Pultizer-Prize winning novel, Show Boat
- 1926
- show boat were popular entertainment
- 19th century
- authored Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Showboat
- Ferber, Edna
- playwrite
- Hammerstein II, Oscar
- Kern, Jerome
- singer
- Robeson, Paul
- ID Number
- 2008.3026.01
- nonaccession number
- 2008.3026
- catalog number
- 2008.3026.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Temple Toggle Iron
- Description
- Very little is known of Lewis Temple's early life. Born around 1800 to slave parents in Richmond, Virginia , by 1829 he had moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married. By 1836, he had a blacksmith shop on a local wharf, where he made shipsmithing items like spikes, harpoons, rigging elements, cargo hooks, barrel hoop and other iron ship fittings.
- Temple developed a simple but significant refinement to the harppon: the so-called Temple toggle iron or gig. This feature at the tip of a harpoon offered a more secure way to hook into a whale. Unfortunately, Temple never patented his idea, which swiftly achieved widespread application throughout the world's whale fisheries. He died in May 1854, unrecognized and in debt.
- While Lewis Temple did not invent the toggle, his invention made it better. The first barb at the tip of the dart was designed to penetrate the whale's flesh, and the second barb also went straight in. A small wooden peg holding the lower barb in place would then break when the whale pulled away, allowing the barbed head to swivel away from the shaft. The new T-shape of the barb prevented the dart from pulling out of its wound.
- date made
- ca 1859
- inventor
- Temple, Lewis
- ID Number
- TR*330535A
- catalog number
- 330535a
- accession number
- 294088
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Scrimshaw Ivory Whale Stamp
- Description
- Carved from the teeth of captured sperm whales, whale stamps were used to record the type of whale and number of barrels of oil they yielded.
- The stamps were inked onto the page of whaleship logbooks or sailors’ journals, with an empty space in the whale’s body for writing in the number of barrels. This example in the form of a sperm whale is decorated with steel pin heads and a turned handle.
- date made
- 1800s
- ID Number
- 1978.0052.06
- accession number
- 1978.0052
- catalog number
- 1978.52.6
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Wood and Ivory Parallel Rule
- Description
- Part of the navigator’s tool kit, parallel rules were used to transfer compass points, course lines and other directional information across large charts without change. This large wooden set has a carved ivory whale inlaid into its surface, with a brass tack for the whale’s eye.
- ID Number
- 1978.0052.08
- accession number
- 1978.0052
- catalog number
- 1978.52.31
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
The Propeller Indiana’s “Philadelphia Wheel”
- Description
- Indiana's propeller was manufactured by Spang & Co. of Pittsburgh, PA, as stamped on one of the blades. This firm, a large iron manufacturing company centered in Pittsburgh, PA, was founded in 1828 and was one of the earliest and largest manufacturers of iron products in the United States.
- The hub of the propeller is cast iron; the blades are rolled iron. One of the intact blades is chipped and dented, suggesting a collision. Another blade is missing outside the yellow line, which marks where a large section broke loose, probably from hitting an object in the water. This piece struck the Indiana's sternpost, literally “shivered her timbers,” and started the leak that sank the ship. The blade broke off completely when the ship struck the lakebed and was found at the wreck site, buried in the sand under the stern post. It is reproduced here in fiberglass.
- The closest design is by Richard Loper of Philadelphia, who registered three propeller-related patents in 1844 and 1845 and licensed his ideas to shipbuilders Reany, Neafie & Co., also of Philadelphia. Contemporary accounts state that Loper’s design was the most popular in the Great Lakes region, and some Lakes propeller manufacturers even advertised his design as the “Philadelphia Wheel.”
- Date made
- 1848
- possible patentee
- Loper, Richard
- maker
- Spang & Company
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.05
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.05
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Coal from Propeller Indiana
- Description
- The abundance of timber along the shores of the Great Lakes gave steamboats a ready supply of fuel. Partly burned logs from Indiana's boiler grate indicate that the boiler had been stoked just before the steamboat sank.
- Pound for pound, coal provides more energy than wood. Coal was found in the vicinity of the boiler in the hold, and historical sources indicate that it was a common fuel on upbound (northerly) voyages, while wood was the principal downbound fuel.
- ID Number
- 1979.1030.07
- catalog number
- 1979.1030.07
- accession number
- 1979.1030
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
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