robertniss

Captain R. Ness was the captain of the Christian X, about which I've posted a few things in the comments section for this photo of the ship.

This "Christian X" is probably the same Christian X discussed at length in this letter published in the September 26, 1912 New York Times. The author, Johns J. Rogert, discusses the incredible efficiency of new ships fueled by oil. "The steamship requires recoaling four times to circle the globe if she carries coal in her bunkers. The oil ship circles the globe with what she can carry in her double bottom." There's a LOC picture of the ship's captain, Capt. Robert Niss, here. The Sept. 12, 1912 New York Times reports that Niss "had been queried by every ship he has sighted as to what he had done with the smokestacks." Christian X was the King of Denmark from May 14, 1912 to 1947. (He is populary thought to have worn a yellow Star of David in support and sympathy with the Jews of Denmark during WWII, though this is fiction.) Next to it is a barge with what's probably "Berwind's Eureka Coal" on the side.The Berwind-White Company was in its day a coal-mining operation that, among other things, supplied coal to steam-powered ships. They had offices on Sixth Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey.