This beautiful painting of the USC&GS Steamer Oceanographer was painted by Robert Foster, who served aboard the Oceanographer around 1932 to 1936. It came into the hands of his fellow crew member, Lyman M. Rundlett, and was donated to NOAA by Rundlett’s son, James Rundlett.
Painting of the Oceanographer by its crew member Robert Foster, circa 1935. (Image credit: Photo: NOAA Heritage, Painting donated by the Rundlett family in memory of Lyman M Rundlett, a Radioman on the Oceanographer in the early 1930s.)
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The painting shows a starboard beam view of the Oceanographer underway. The ship’s black hull is unique. Most USC&GS ships of this era had white hulls, but the Oceanographer retained the glossy black paint from her former life as a pleasure yacht. The ship flies the USC&GS Service Flag from the truck of the foremast (the mast on the right side of the painting), the USC&GS Commission Pennant at the truck of the mainmast (the mast on the left side of the painting), and the National Ensign from a gaff on the mainmast. Two of the ship’s boats, the forward one a motor launch, the after one a whaleboat, can be seen gripped in their davits, aft of the smokestack (the tall cylinder in the center of the ship).
Starting out in 1897 as financier J.P. Morgan’s $3 million yacht Corsair III, the ship also served in the Navy during both World Wars with a stint as a USC&GS survey ship in between.
In 1930 J.P. Morgan sold the Corsair III to the Department of Commerce for $1.00, stipulating that she be used as a survey ship. Commissioned into the US Coast & Geodetic Survey as USC&GSS Oceanographer (OSS-26), the ship continued in this service until World War II.
The Oceanographer conducted many offshore surveys and discovered many of the canyons incising the continental slope between the Georges Bank area and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. She also supported the study of geophysics when Maurice Ewing conducted his first seismic reflection profiling experiments from her in 1935.
One of the most dramatic moments in her C&GS career occurred during the August 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane. The Oceanographer’s commanding officer, Harry A. Seran reported that the ship was responsible for all of the U.S. Navy’s radio traffic, as well as some for commercial companies, when the hurricane was at its worst.
The Oceanographer was decommissioned in 1944 and scrapped not long after.
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