In 1968, Crowley Maritime built a new 500-passenger sightseeing vessel for its Red & White fleet based at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Having decided to name its new vessel the Harbor Emperor, Crowley commissioned Elwin Millerick, a folk sculptor in Santa Rosa, Calif., to hand-carve a 5-foot-tall wooden figurehead of Emperor Norton for the bow.

The Emperor Norton figurehead has been photographed thousands of times over the decades and has become a fond feature of the modern Norton pop culture of San Francisco.

Pull up a chair for my theory that — at a minimum — the head and the hat of today’s Harbor Emperor figurehead are not original to 1968 and that — whether because of an accident, vandalism, or rot — they were substantially modified or switched out entirely sometime in the 1970s.