The Snapshots in Time Collection
'The Funnel Gang Ashore at St. Thomas, D.W.I.,' Liberty Party Group Portrait, c. 1898-1910
Members of the ship's 'funnel gang' -- the firemen and coal-passers who tended the boilers -- enjoy shore liberty at St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies, around 1898-1910. Caribbean port calls like this one were a regular feature of U.S. Navy cruising duty in the era before the United States purchased the islands from Denmark in 1917. Project: 218602