Chaplin Airlines  Curtiss MF                                   (No registration - c/n not known)

                               

                                       There have always been services to and from Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles.  I really
                                       don't know why the obsession to providing such service, since there is very little to do on the
                                       island when one gets there.   I think, actually, it was more active in the 1920s than it was
                                       when I visited a few times in the early 1960s.   Anyway, a very early carrier was when Syd
                                       Chaplin operated a service in 1919 from the harbor at San Pedro to Avalon using this ancient
                                       Curtiss flying boat.  Looks like one passenger.  As the script indicates on this shot by Art
                                       Burns, it was arguably the first regularly scheduled passenger airline in the United States. 
                                       The company flew from July to September 1919 and was then disbanded.  .