steampunk

Awesome old photo!

As a national group, people of Japanese background or descent have played a major role in the history and development of the pearling industry, especially in the Torres Strait. By way of illustration, in the period up to the beginning of the Second World War, the Japanese made up a high proportion of pearl divers, were prominent in the Thursday Island business community as well as pioneering a range of boat-related industries. As well, many Japanese were prominent in other areas of the Torres Strait. In the early 1880s, Captain A. Miller was amongst the first to use Japanese divers in his pearling and other marine operations, and within a decade, those of Japanese descent were to become the largest national group working in the pearling industry. To a significant extent, this was because the Japanese were highly regarded by the general and business communities as reliable and very experienced workers. By the mid 1920s, almost one hundred percent of all divers working in pearling were Japanese with the Japanese section of Thursday Island known locally as Yokohama. Also, in the period up until to the beginning of the Second World War, the Japanese largely controlled the Thursday Island boat building industry. This influence was to end with the outbreak of war, with many Japanese people being interned and later sent home. The contribution of the Japanese in the pearling industry cannot be overstated, however as a group, they paid a high personal price for their involvement. Pearl diving was inherently dangerous and more than 700 Japanese people died in the Torres Strait between 1878 and 1941 with more than half of these being younger than 21 years old. In acknowledgment of the important contribution made by those of Japanese descent to the pearling industry as a whole, a commemorative memorial was erected on Thursday Island in 1979. Source: www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/queensland-places-torres-strait-j...

The second motorcycle is a Singer (British) bike, made until 1915 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer_Motors

awesome

Get a PDF of a brief New York Times article (missing its first paragraph) published May 14, 1911, which tells about these British amateur boxers who were visiting the U.S. at the time: (URL ) (Registration on the Times website might be needed to see the page- I'm not sure.) There are other Times articles about the boxers as well: Googling on "boxer Erskine" got me the article I mentioned and two others in the News Archive links at the bottom of the results page. "A. Spenceley" might have been either of two A.Spenceleys active in the 1910s to 1920s: Arthur or Alf. I'm guessing they might have been brothers or cousins. Here's a page mentioning Arthur Spenceley. Looks as though he went professional, but without success. I can't find an info page for Alf, but an ebay user has or had a postcard photo of him on sale: Here's a Google cache in case the original page is gone. It looks as though most of these boxers are mentioned on this page of the Amateur Boxing Association of England website. Rube Warnes was middleweight champion in 1910, W.W. Allen was bantamweight champion and A. Spenceley lightweight champion in 1911. R. Erskine lost the featherweight championship title to H. Bowers that same year. Allen appears in every year listed on the page. I haven't yet examined the site beyond the page to which I linked. Parks doesn't appear at all. I guess his giant hands did him no good.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Boxing_Association_of_England en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Mostyn_Parks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Charles_Warnes Here they are in a photo published in the New York Times on May 14, 1911:

W.W.Allen was a British bantamweight boxer and bantamweight champion of the Amateur Boxing Association of England in 1911, 1912, 1914 and 1919.