USS Langley at Norfolk

I came across a book in my family's collection called The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, copyrighted 1903 by M Walter Dunne, entered at Stationer's Hall, London, published as "ten volumes in one" by Walter J Black Co, 171 Madison Avenue, New York City, and printed in the US. The book is inscribed, "Property of James Thomas Walker, USS Langley, Norfolk Va."

Many of the old books in my personal collection came into my father's hands on a single occasion in the 1960s. His mother, Kathryn Lucilla (Carr) Noble, widow of Robert, had boxes of books she needed to dispose of. And my father coincidentally had a bunch of empty bookshelves in the basement of our home in Landover, Maryland just waiting for some books. Much to my wife's regret, most of them ended up in my personal collection when my father and step-mother were packing to move to Tennessee after his retirement.

Many of the books were from the estate of my grandmother's favorite Aunt Kate Morgan, who died in 1936. The collection has many inscriptions dating back to the 1880s through the 1910s with the surnames Morgan, Pierpont, Tatnall, et al. (My Aunt Kathryn (Noble) Ogg also had a lot of these books in her living room bookshelves.)

Some of the books are those acquired by my father during his World War Two service in Australia. Others are my Aunt Kathryn's childhood books, including an English grammar book, an English literature book, and a Girl Scouts manual, all from the late 1920s early 1930s, some stamped Maury High School and marked with Kathryn's homeroom number.

But I suppose that some of the books must have belonged to Robert, presenting us with the opportunity for additional clues about his family and personal sojourn. I like to think this book suggests an acquaintance between my grandfather and Mr Walker and/or the USS Langley.

Based on History Central's History of Ships and Navies: USS Langley, there are a couple of interesting intersections between that ship and the life of my grandfather, Robert J Noble.

• Between 1920 and 1924, the USS Langley was retrofitted at Norfolk into the first aircraft carrier of the US fleet, sea trialed in the Caribbean, and exhibited at Washington. My grandfather relocated from Baltimore to Norfolk during this period.
• Prior to its renaming as the USS Langley in 1920, the collier USS Jupiter became the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal west to east on Columbus Day 1914, while returning from Pacific duty off Mexico during the Veracruz crisis. My grandfather always claimed to have sailed on the first ship through the Panama Canal, but records of the canal's inaugural passage east to west didn't show him aboard that vessel. Perhaps he was aboard this US Navy ship for some reason? Seems unlikely. Ancestry has only limited passenger records for a merchant marine ship called the SS Jupiter, and those are from a landing at New Orleans in mid-1915.

My grandfather lived in Norfolk twice, including the years of the Second World War and those leading up to his death in 1951. He could have picked up the book in those later years and been unacquainted with Mr Walker. But the two items above makes his widow's possession of this book intriguing.