Friday, September 01, 2006

The Mighty "Jumbo" #4


This large shipping crate was placed just ouside the door to the elephant barn which "Jumbo" had to pass thru in order to get into the exercise yard.
Being suspicioius by nature, it took several days of examination before he would pass thru but eventually it became part of his daily routine.
When the day of departure came, large timbers (bull boards) were placed from top to bottom in the slots you see and once he had entered the crate, the same was done behind him.
He was loaded aboard the "Assyrian Monarch" and arrived in the U.S. in March of 1882.

Posted by Buckles at 9/01/2006 05:57:00 AM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I count five [5] boards. Do they spell [THE WORD] a different way over seas?

01 September, 2006 08:47
Buckles said...

Maybe in England it's spelled FUERK!

01 September, 2006 09:09
Anonymous said...

From Eric:

The Sergeant Cribb episode THE LAST TRUMPET dealing with the crating up of Jumbo is now available on DVD. This was originally a 60-minute episode of a BBC TV series produced in the early 1980’s about a London police detective from the 1880’s, adapted from novels by Peter Lovesey. I originally saw this episode when it aired on PBS back in the early 1980s. Having just watched it again I can say that it was BETTER than I remembered it to be. (The British are always so much better than Hollywood when it comes to making “period” films.) The characters include Jumbo’s handler Scott and “Elephant Bill,” who is there to oversee Jumbo’s transportation to America. The master set that is supposed to represent the London Zoo in 1882 looks substantial enough to be an actual Victorian zoo that somehow escaped being torn down or modernized. And the music score includes what sounds like an authentic old English parlor ballade about poor Jumbo being taken away to America. They actually used an African elephant in some of the scenes. He’s not as big as Jumbo but, through the use of clever camera angles, they manage to give the impression that he’s bigger than he actually is. The final scene is a particularly elaborate one, with the crated-up Jumbo being hauled away by a 40-horse hitch. This was definitely a big-budget production and all the extra time and care shows on the screen. Highly recommended!

01 September, 2006 12:13

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