Item Description
Original Items. Only One Set Available. This is a gorgeous pair of WWI Era Navy headgear, including a nice M1895 Officer’s Forage style cap with a Naval insignia manufactured by John W. Calver & Son of Philadelphia. The other cap is a gorgeous WWI Navy Flat Cap, of the earlier and much wider variety, with a tally for the USS Agamemnon, a captured German ocean liner used to transport troops during the war.
The M1895 cap is in rough condition, missing its chinstrap and one of the two gilt navy buttons. The lining is separating from the cap but it is still attached with the bullseye style stitching on the crown. The maker’s mark is still very visible. There is some scattered mothing but a very scarce example to find in any condition.
The flat cap is a great example with very heavy color fading from being worn so terribly much on the open seas. The Agamemnon had a very interesting career. When she was built as the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1902, she was the largest ship registered in Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself was present at her launching. When war was declared in April 1917, she was seized in a US-controlled port. Her German crew had sabotaged her machinery, so she was repaired at Brooklyn Navy Yard, and used as a barracks ship while being repaired.
Late in August 1917 the US Navy commissioned her as USS Kaiser Wilhelm II (ID-3004). At the beginning of September she was renamed Agamemnon. At the end of October she entered service, carrying troops to France. At sea on 9 November 1917 she was damaged in a collision with another large ex-German transport, USS Von Steuben, but completed her crossing to Europe a few days later. After her return to the US in December and subsequent repairs, Agamemnon steamed to France in mid-January 1918 and thereafter regularly crossed the North Atlantic in support of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front. She occasionally encountered real or suspected U-boats. In the fall of 1918 Spanish flu broke out aboard.
In mid-December 1918, just over a month after the Armistice with Germany, Agamemnon began to repatriate US troops from France. She made nine voyages by August 1919, carrying nearly 42,000 service personnel, some four thousand more than she had taken overseas during the war. USS Agamemnon was decommissioned late in August and turned over to the War Department for use as a US Army Transport. She was laid up after the mid-1920s. In 1927 she was renamed Monticello, but saw no further service. She was considered too old for further use in World War II, and was sold for scrap in 1940.
The cap is in good shape without any major damage, but could use some time on a mannequin head to help the tally area regain its shape. The tally is in great shape and there is some minor mothing but overall this is a truly gorgeous example of a scarcely seen cap!
The Agamemnon cap measures a Size 7, while the M1895 cap measures a Size 6 3/4.
This is a great pair of Naval headgear from the WWI era, ready for further research and display.
- This product is available for international shipping.
- Eligible for all payments - Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AMEX, Paypal & Sezzle
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