Aboard the Seth Parker

a booklet produced by
the Frigidaire Corporation

Background

Once upon a time, a young go-getter by the name of Phillips Haynes Lord became one of American radio's early broadcasting stars by concocting himself the persona of a homespun rural New England preacher-philosopher, "Seth Parker", and dishing out stories, the community singing of hymns, and the like. (For those of us whose memory doesn't go back quite that far, think Garrison Keillor and his Minnesota tales of Lake Wobegon.)

In the early 1930s, Lord came up with the idea of taking his Seth Parker creation on a sailing ship which would cruise around the world, broadcasting back to his audience in the United States, thus adding sea salt to the New England mix. The innovative idea appealed to NBC Radio and . . . to the Frigidaire Corporation, who donated refrigeration, water-cooling, and air-conditioning units to the well-equipped 57‑meter four-masted schooner, and made sure the American public knew of their contribution by publishing the 32‑page booklet I've transcribed here, which showcases these Frigidaire appliances in text and images.

Lord secured additional funding for the project by the further clever inspiration of selling philatelic subscriptions to the general public: special commemorative envelopes would be sent to them franked with local stamps at the Seth Parker's ports of call around the world. The boat never did make it around the world, meeting with disaster in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; the philately, curiously, was a bit more success­ful. That, and many other interesting details about the cruise are very well told by John Woram on an excellent page hosted by WhaleSite.Org.

Contents

Illustrations

The booklet has no table of illustrations; this one is mine. I've chosen not to reproduce a number of decorative line-drawing vignettes which don't add anything to the work. At least one of the drawings was drawn specially for Frigidaire by Edward A. Wilson, a version of it being published as a free-standing full-color print, in the background of which we even see a Chinese junk, in anticipation of something that never happened, since the Seth Parker never got anywhere near China.

Technical Details

Edition Used

The edition I transcribed here appears to be the first and only one. It is in the public domain because the 1934 copyright was not renewed in 1961 or 1962 as then required by law; details here on the copyright law involved.

Pagination and Local Links

The pages of the printed booklet are not numbered; the page numbers are my own. For citation and indexing purposes, the pagination is shown in the right margin of the text at the page turns (like at the end of this line); (p5)  these are also local anchors. Sticklers for total accuracy will of course find the anchor at its exact place in the sourcecode.

In addition, I've inserted a number of other local anchors: whatever links might be required to accommodate the author's own cross-references, as well as a few others for my own purposes. If in turn you have a website and would like to target a link to some specific passage of the text, please let me know: I'll be glad to insert a local anchor there as well.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it — not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise I heartily recommend: Qui scribit, bis legit. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

My transcription has been minutely proofread. In the table of contents above, the sections are shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree; a red background would mean that the page had not been proofread. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme.

The printed booklet was very well proofread; I didn't find any typographical errors. Underscored measurements provide conversions to metric, e.g., 75 pounds.

One or two odd spellings, curious turns of phrase, etc. have been marked <!‑‑ sic  in the sourcecode, just to confirm that they were checked.

Any over­looked mistakes, please drop me a line, of course: especially if you have a copy of the printed book in front of you.

---

The icon I use to indicate this subsite is my colorized version of the engraving on page (3) that heads off the first section, describing the Seth Parker.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)
UP TO:		American Maritime History	American & Military History	History of the Americas	Home
A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY if its URL has a total of one *asterisk. If the URL has two **asterisks, the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use. If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer. See my copyright page for details and contact information.

Accessibility