(by Gina Bardi, Reference Librarian)
This month I wrote a story about poetry in our collection
for both our blog and our Park website. While researching, I came across a
delightful find, HDC 35 (SAFR 17607), The Captain Thompson Poems and Illustrations
Collection. After seeing his charming drawings, I wanted to learn more about
him so I went to the collection files. It turns out, there’s a bit of a mystery
surrounding the documents. As far as I can tell, the images and poems were sent
to us unsolicited. The name of the donor was not Thompson and apparently they
sent the work with no background information. In the file, there are numerous
envelopes we sent to the donors asking for more information which were sent
back to us marked “return to sender: not at this address”.
There is a letter in the collection (see below; it’s highly
amusing), that may or may not be in the same handwriting as the poems (some
letters look similar, some very different, but the letter looks to have been
quickly jotted down and perhaps not as much care taken as with the poems.) The
letter is signed by an Alec Macson, Moeson or something like that who purports to
be club secretary. The other gentlemen
who signed the letter are sometimes mentioned in the poems. There is no Captain
Thompson mentioned in either the letters or the poems.
The ship the author mentions, is “The good ship Kay” or simply “K”. I checked the American Bureau of Shipping and
Lloyd’s registers in the years around 1914- there are no listing for a ship
that begins with K having either a Thompson or a Riess (the man often referred
to in the drawings) as a master.
I checked the California Digital Newspaper Collection for a “Captain Riess” with no luck. There were too many Captain
Thompsons to be sure. None of the articles about the various Captain Thompson
mentioned poetry or illustrations.
I have a feeling
though the poet is British, due to some of the language in the poems. For
instance, sailors are “crossed and crabbed” He also mentions Lobscouse, which
is a typical sailor stew common on British ships. Lastly, the uniforms look
distinctly British. Perhaps the stripes are just meant to be blue shading?
Here are some of the poems and the letter. If you recognize the style at all or the
names and can tell us anything about this clever and talented author, please
let us know.
