RECENT RESEARCH — When Crowley Maritime in 1968 built a new 500-passenger sightseeing vessel for its Red & White fleet based at Fisherman’s Wharf, the company named the vessel the Harbor Emperor and commissioned a 5-foot-tall hand-carved wooden figurehead of Emperor Norton for the bow. The Norton figurehead has been photographed thousands of times over the decades and has become a fond feature of the modern Norton pop culture of San Francisco. BUT: Pull up a chair for our theory that — at a minimum — the head and the hat of today’s Harbor Emperor figurehead are not original to 1968 and that — whether because of an accident, vandalism, or rot — they were substantially modified or switched out entirely sometime in the 1970s.

The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

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Did San Francisco City Government Really Buy Emperor Norton a New Suit?

For nearly a century, one of the favored “chestnuts” served up in biographical accounts of Emperor Norton has been the claim that, when the Emperor’s uniform became tattered, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the City’s elected government — bought him a new one.

It now appears that this undocumented story may have gotten its start in a little book about the Emperor that was published in the late 1920s — nearly 50 years after his death.

But, during the period of Emperor Norton’s reign, 1859–1880, neither San Francisco’s newspapers nor the City’s own Municipal Reports have any record of such official government largesse.

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