shown wresting the behemoth Majestic from its wharf is the R.J. Barrett, built 1893 at Athens, New York, by Peter Magee for E.E. Barrett & Company, a prominent New York harbor towing firm founded by the father of Captain Richard J. Barrett, the vessel's namesake, Hoboken resident, and then the firm's head. For its time the Barrett was a large and powerful ship handling tug with a single cylinder steam engine and a firebox boiler, all of which it would retain its entire life. If the year is 1903, the location is Pier 48. The Barrett had a remarkably long life for a wooden tug, operating for Barrett until 1943 when sold to the Mathiesen Shipping Company of another well known New York tug family, renamed Mathiesen. The end came in 1947 when the Mathiesen was abandoned, probably at the graveyard of tugs at the east end of Arthur Kill.

After being scrapped in 1914, parts of her interior were sold off, with the skylight of the first-class dining room eventually ending up at the Smithsonian Institution.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1342683

On the upper deck an officer, in white, is snapping a photo of the crowd bidding the Majestic bon voyage. On the deck below him there are only working-class men who, to me, look more like crew members you don't normally see during the voyage than third-class passengers.

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Commanded at this time by Edward Smith, who served as captain from 1895 to 1904. In 1904, White Star started assigning Smith as captain on their newest (and largest) ships as they were launched: the Baltic in 1904, the Adriatic in 1907, the Olympic in 1911, and of course, the Titanic in 1912.