Baltimore, MD, 2009-05-17—An informational panel at the Baltimore Immigration Memorial at Tide Point bears the wrong date for the arrival of the Norddeutscher Lloyd’s (NDL) first of the line S/S Baltimore at Locust Point. An inset reads:
The S.S. Baltimore arrived on
January 3, 1868, the first ship to
land at this immigration site in
Locust Point
The correct date is March 23, 1868. The front page of the Sun for 1868-03-24 has an article titled “Baltimore and Bremen Steamers: Arrival of the Steamship Baltimore, the First of the Line” which begins “About 9 o’clock yesterday [my emphasis] morning the steamship Baltimore…,” making the date of arrival the 23rd of March. I’ve seen sources which are off-by-a-day, giving the 24th, the date of the newspaper account, as the date of arrival.
The Baltimore left Bremen for its maiden voyage on the 1st of March (1868-03-01) at 12:50 PM. I wonder if the incorrect date of January 3, 1868 (1868-01-03) as given on the plaque is because of the following: That certain reference books date the inauguration of the NDL Baltimore service with the departure of the ship and give the date of departure in European date format, that is, 1 March 1868, which is numerically represented as 1/03/1868 (or 01.03.1868 if one follows the German convention). An American reading the numeric date would interpret it as “January 3, 1868”.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Baltimore Immigration Memorial and Liberty Garden was held on 2006-03-15 and the panel was installed sometime in the first two weeks of 2009-05.
2009-05-17
Correction: 2010-01-16: ‘panel’ and ‘informational panel’ were substituted, as appropritae, for ‘plaque.’ The date of the article at the end, originally reading ‘2008’, was corrected to 2009.