John DeBardeleben writes:

"My grandfather (John Frederick DeBardeleben 1904-1988) was the Chief Radio Operator on the S.S.Bessemer City from 1927 until at least 1929. I don’t have a picture of him taken in uniform, but the attached was taken about that time.

He wrote many very detailed letters home about the voyages he was on and life on the ship, he kept all of these in a sort of notebook which I have. One letter was written on the back of the Thanksgiving 1929 menu and it was on Isthmian letterhead.

I don’t know how long he sailed since the letters end Christmas 1929. He had an interesting life in radio working for one of the Houston networks and later for the FCC in DC. During WW2, he worked in South America (Peru in particular) using radio detection to try and break Nazi spy networks."