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This Real Photo Postcard is an amazing piece of American nautical history. The image shows a wooden railroad car ferry named Shenango No. 1 shipwrecked on Lake Eerie in 1904. Shenango No. 1 was built in 1895 and designed to transport railroad cars across the Great Lakes. In January 1904, the ship became trapped in ice. In March, a fire broke out (likely because the equipment was overworked and overheated in the ice) and the deck was completely burned through. Eventually, the railroad cars the ship was carrying, fell into the hold and sank the ship.
In this RPPC, you can see the smoke from the still-burning fire aboard the ship, and you can see a crowd gathered to watch the scene on shore. It is an outstanding image, even for those uninterested in ships. This antique postcard is in very fine shape with minimal corner rounding and slight foxing and faint pencil marks on the back.
