News travelled fast to the RELIANCE team that the flagpole in Brown University’s commons had collapsed from the recent storm. Why did this catch our eye? Well, the flagpole is actually a topmast that was given to the university by C. Oliver Iselin in 1918; later on, Hope Goddard Iselin (the real Barbie Bristol) apparently attributed it as the topmast for COLUMBIA.

After a little bit of research, we shot down that claim: drawings for the COLUMBIA show a much shorter topmast with a straight cylinder, wasp-shaped, hollowed-out interior (much like on RELIANCE).

However, the cap–shown in the bottom two photos–is very similar to the caps of RELIANCE and COLUMBIA. We’ll definitely keep that information for later.