Living in Liverpool, a Major Shipping Port, for centuries it would come as no surprise to hear that some of the finds you make Metal Detecting can be related to 'The Seas'. My Father, also a keen Metal Detectorist has found numerous Commemorative Medals - Two of particular interest. These relate to the ships Mauretania and Lusitania.
Mauretania was Lusitania's nearly identical sister. Launched in 1906, Mauretania made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York on 16 November 1907 - another significant point in Liverpool's history. During World War I Mauretania served as a troopship and a hospital ship. On 26 September 1934, the day Queen Mary was launched, Mauretania left New York on her final Atlantic crossing. She was scrapped in 1935. Many parts of the ship were made into Medals commemorating the ships existence.
The keel for the Lusitania was laid in May, 1905 in Clydebank, Glasgow. A bit over twelve months later it was completed and launched on June 7, 1906.Lusitania was 785 feet long and 88 feet wide with a displacement of 31,550 tons. The great ship was driven by four steam turbines generating what at that time was an impressive total of 68,000 horsepower capable of speeding this greyhound of the seas to over 26 knots. In 1907 the Lusitania retook the coveted Blue Ribaud (Blue Ribbon), the trophy held by the fastest ship in the Atlantic, and flaunted by the Germans for the previous decade. For the next eight years the Lusitania undertook regular and profitable service ferrying passengers and freight across the Atlantic. This ship also had a medal made but for a far more interesting and important reason. Thanks to Greg Burns of www.lusitaniamedal.com an expert in this field - he has allowed me to reproduce excerpts from an article on the medal in question. For those who are interested in reading more a visit to his website is highly recommended.
THE LUSITANIA MEDAL______________________________________________________________________Karl Goetz
This German medalist and sculptor was best known for his satirical medals created during and shortly after the conclusion of World War I. Born in Augsburg, Germany, he studied art in that city under master Johannes Dominal and continued his education and training in Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and Düsseldorf until 1897. After spending the subsequent two years in the Netherlands, and after that Paris for five years, he finally settled in Munich where he spent the rest of his life. Karl Goetz was a busy man, enjoying active membership in the Munich's Artist Society, The Numismatic Society, The Ancient Club of Munich, and the Artisan Society for Numismatics in Vienna. Karl Goetz also extended his sculpting and medalist abilities in the creation of pattern coins for the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.
By the later 1940s, Goetz struggled to continue working as he dealt with increasing paralysis in his right hand caused by a stroke. By the time of his death at the age of seventy-five his entire right side was paralyzed.
Writer Gunter W. Kienast (The Medals of Karl Goetz [1967, reprinted 1980], and later Goetz II: a supplement to The Medals of Karl Goetz [1986]) chronicled some 784 different medallic works of Karl Goetz, including 175 with satirical themes. Many of the non-satirical medals were created as commemoratives of significant events in his personal life or the lives of his friends and acquaintances, or to commemorate the birth or life of a famous personage.
Goetz received many awards and recognitions during his lifetime, including the Silver State Medal at Nuremburg (1906), the State Medal at Gent (1913), and posthumously, the Silver State Medal of the World Exposition in Madrid in 1951.
The First Goetz MedalKarl Goetz must have been stewing in heated indignation as he sat sipping his coffee and reading his morning paper. The impertinent British had the arrogance to put innocent lives on board what he understood to be a military transport, with their hope that the barrier of guiltless souls would prevent the German navy from sinking the ship with its cargo of munitions destined for the deaths of noble Germans fighting for the Vaterland. Imagine Goetz as he repeats the parade of righteous anger over and over in his mind. An image forms of a medal, another satirical spear with which to jab the inflated British ego and to expose them for the hypocritical and heartless money-grubbers they were. Eventually his mental picture took form within his hands. Busy in his workshop he carefully sculpted the piece.
Unfortunately for Karl Goetz and the German propaganda machinery, he put the wrong date of sinking on the medal, an error he later attributed to an error in the newspaper account he had read. By mistake, instead of the correct date of May 7, Karl put on his medal the date of May 5, a full two days before the actual sinking. Without realizing his error Karl began to make copies of the satirical medal and to sell them on the streets of Munich and to the select numismatic dealers with whom he regularly dealt. The date error probably didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time.
The British Copy
The British quickly recognized and seized the propaganda windfall Goetz’ medal provided. They raced to produce their own copies of Goetz’ medal and accompanied it with a propaganda pamphlet which strongly and slantedly denounced the Germans, and accused them of premeditated wholesale murder. The British copies are of a poorer quality and were produced in iron by die casting. The British copies can be distinguished by their poor looks alone, and also by their anglicized spelling of the German “Mai” as “May”, though not all of them are so made.
The Second Goetz Medal
Seeing the world’s abhorrent response to the tragedy, and finding the British joyfully compounding this reaction with their inflammatory copy of the medal along with its literature, Karl Goetz set about to correct his mistake by producing a second version of the medal with the proper date of “7 Mai.”
The Pennsylvania Copy
The British weren’t the only ones with strong feelings regarding the German ethics involved with the tragedy. Among a hoard of others were two men in the United States, Gustav Sandstrom and Clarence Mahood of Warren County, Pennsylvania.
Sandstrom and Mahood created their own copy of the medal and sold it along with their own version of the box and propaganda leaflet similar to the British. With several obvious differences in appearance, they sold along with the box and leaflet for fifty cents apiece, three for a dollar, or a dozen for three dollars.
Today these pieces are fairly scarce and command a nice premium among knowledgeable collectors over the common British copies. The Sandstrom and Mahood pieces are easily distinguished by the style of lettering and die engraving, and most obviously by the rather goofy grinning pumpkin head of a skeleton.
Other Copies
In the 1970’s, Guido Goetz, Karl’s son and heir to his medals cabinet, authorized a Japanese firm to produce reproductions of many of Karl Goetz’ more popular medals, among them the Lusitania medal. Fortunately, these authorized reproductions are distinguishable in a number of ways, most noticeably with a visible difference in quality as they are actually more finely finished than even Karl’s genuine pieces. Cheaply offered in the past, the Japanese copies are, like the Sandstrom and Mahood copies, fairly scarce and command a premium.
In addition, there are currently at least two sources that dabble in producing and marketing copies of the medal. They also have distinguishing characteristics that set them apart from the other varieties.
Finally, because of the medal’s popularity it has been frequently counterfeited. These are usually cheaply done copies that appear to have been produced perhaps in a high school metals class or a similar lark. Sometimes appearing in lead, other times in pewter or other alloys, most of these are extremely crude and instantly recognizable as cheap imitations.
Attribution
The techniques used to tell apart the different varieties of the medal include visual appearance and casting quality, magnetic properties, edge marking, presence and type of patination, weight, specific gravity (alloy density), lettering distance from the edge, presence of German umlauts (the little dots over certain alphabetic characters such as in “gerschäft über”), and a few others. Aside from visible characteristics, specific gravity determinations are the most reliable means of attribution.
Related Ephemera
The British and Pennsylvania copies both come with their respective boxes, and there are several varieties of the propaganda pamphlets for each.
The British pamphlet is very scarce in the German, French and Spanish language versions, and at least the English language version comes both with and without the legend at the top that states, “Do not destroy this...When you have read it carefully through kindly pass it on to a friend.”
The Sandstrom and Mahood pamphlets and boxes are just plain scarce, regardless of variety. There are several varieties of their pamphlet in various colors, layout and wording. And interestingly, considering the rather obvious knock-off of the British medal and ephemera, the Warren County producers had the brass to claim a copyright on their material. Talk about American ingenuity!
This really is what makes our hobby extremely interesting. Every article you find has a piece of history. It needn't be 2000 years old to have historic value. Even war medals we find from the last century to me hold - as much, if not more - interest than a Bronze Age Axehead from those years before Christ.
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