This quality three-quarter portrait view of the Anchor Liner CALEDONIA must have earned Fred Pansing some additional acclaim to his already well established reputation with the passenger liner companies. Bristling with speed and strength, the massive liner is churning water on her way to America. The anxious passengers and crew are visible, with the heights of the red air vents and the dual black stacks rising high, topped still by the American Flag as the destination symbol, and the company's red anchor diagonally across a white field house-flag off the mizzen top.
Launched in 1904, CALEDONIA registered at 500 feet and 9,223 gross tons out of the Glasgow Yard of D. & W. Henderson for the Anchor Fleet, the third vessel of five eventually so named for the line. Pushing her twin-screws with a massive steam engine, she could make 18 knots while comfortably carrying accommodations for 383 1st, 216 2nd and 869 3rd class passengers. She has put into the premier service on the Glasgow to New York route immediately, where she served for nine years before being commissioned as a troop ship in 1914. Carrying soldiers and horses from Dublin to France, to Bombay and Canada, then in the Mediterranean, she was torpedoed and sunk on Dec. 4, 1916, 125 miles from Malta.
This excellent work was a direct commission for the Anchor Line, Scotland's oldest such company founded in 1856, the year they began their service to New York. Pansing in no small way would have contributed to their success, in displaying ships such as CALEDONIA in such a professional and confident manner. The company used this very image for advertising posters and postcards, some of which survive in collections today, but there is nothing quite like the original work of art. It makes one wish to have had the opportunity to voyage onboard such a majestic ship.
