Dated October 25, 1901, this is a pastel and chalk rendering of the steam yacht America by Russell Williams Porter, an artist and surveyor for the the Baldwin-Ziegler Polar Expedition of 1901. The America would later be crushed by pack ice during the subsequent Fiala-Ziegler Expedition of 1903.
A veteran of six Arctic trips between 1894 and 1903, Russell W. Porter left behind an impressive collection of paintings, drawings, notebooks, journals, and correspondence.

