Recently I had the good fortune of being in the Boston area and was able to visit some of our artifacts currently on loan to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Their exhibition, Ocean Liners: Glamour, Speed, and Style is open from now until October 9, after which it will be traveling to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. We loaned them a number of fantastic pieces, including some that are quite large.
In the second room, seen in the picture above, the engineering of these mighty ships was discussed and two of our artifacts were included. The first is the piece hanging from the ceiling, a towing tank model of SS United States. This model was tested in the U.S. Navy’s David W. Taylor Model Basin at Bethesda, Maryland in 1946. The other piece is the cream-colored half model on the wall to the right. It doesn’t look like much in this photo, but it is a 21′ plating model for SS United States, made in 1949.
