[PHOTOGRAPHY - MARINE VESSELS]. Photograph album of a mariner's working life for the New Zealand Shipping Company, including a voyage through the Panama Canal and the Canadian Maritimes. [New Zealand, Panama Canal, New Brunswick, 1921-23].

Oblong 8vo. 93 gelatin silver print photographs mounted onto brown cardstock leaves, not necessarily in chronological order. Photographs vary in size, the smallest measuring approximately 55 x 25 mm., and the largest 145 x 85 mm. String-tied album measuring approximately 175 x 150 mm. (Indication of moisture to boards, fading to a scant few images).

Album of photographs taken by a young and enthusiastic merchant mariner employed by the New Zealand Shipping Company (NZSC) on a refrigerated cargo steamer, featuring a voyage through the Panama Canal to the Canadian Maritimes and the American East coast. With captioned dates spanning from June 1921 to June 1923, this album features images of New Zealand, the Panama Canal, and life at sea, as seen and enjoyed by a working member of a crew the S.S. Piako, a refrigerated cargo liner then recently built by the New Zealand Shipping Company. With its trade route, the photographer had the opportunity to make several voyages across the South Pacific, through the Panama Canal - of which he includes several photographs of New Brunswick, New York and Virginia, in North America. The album also includes a newspaper article with photographs of a contemporary shipwreck, of a sister ship of the New Zealand Shipping Company, previously owned by the Federal Steam Navigation Company which was taken over by NZSC in 1912. British passenger/cargo vessel SS Wiltshire, lays wrecked off the Coast of North Island, New Zealand. During the crash, the crew of 103 were tossed out of the vessel, but all managed to take refuge on the rock and were saved after a grueling two days. On 2 June 1922, S.S. Wiltshire at Great Barrier Island the 12,160-ton steam ship, got caught in torrential rain and heavy seas during the dark of night, and hit rocks just north of Rosalie Bay on Great Barrier Island across from Auckland, disgorging its 113 crew without loss over 48 tense hours. She had carried many New Zealand troops to the Middle East during the Great War of 1914-18, many never to return.