erroneous information was passed down to the online collection. Secondly, many of the people working on the collection at the various repositories over the years were not necessarily well-informed in nautical terminology or maritime history. Thirdly, in many cases, the people adding information to a given photograph’s file were looking at the glass plate negative images. Needless to say, this was not always conducive to understanding what is going on in any given picture. As you search the Library of Congress database, you may well come across inaccuracies as to the date, ship name, location, or any number of other possible errors that have crept into the records over the years. This is not the result of stupidity or some malignant conspiracy, but rather the result of trying to describe and provide details for an enormous collection with somewhat scanty information to go on. The good news is that the Library of Congress is happy to receive corrections and make changes to the record. To search the DPC collection start at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/ det/. The search box offers two options: “This Collection” or “Search All.” Stick with “This Collection” if you want the really high resolution, copyright-free material from the DPC. There is an advanced search function that will reduce the number of hits you get, although generally speaking I find it more useful to cast a wider net and get more images to make sure I don’t miss anything. There are two basic approaches. First is a simple search by word or phrase, keeping in mind the caveats about terminology mentioned above. This table shows some searches and the number of images found using each term: Search Term

No. of Returns

“navy yard”

154

battleship

510

harbor

480

rowboats

94

schooner

259

ship

1348

sloop

283

steamer

295

SEA HISTORY 172, AUTUMN 2020 27