WWI Troopship Picture Postcards (Not JWB)
![[postcard]](pics/ss_santa_teresa2.jpg)
A number of other picture postcards have been
seen that depict the troopships that carried
US soldiers and sailors to and from Europe.
Examples of non-JWB ship cards include:
-
Non-JWB ship cards with the same ship images as JWB cards. They were
probably sold by someone who owned copyright on the images,
and may date from
after the War.
-
Another example I've
seen are the "Ship That Brought Us Home"
real photo
cards. I have seen a few and have a few in my collection.
The link above goes to a listing of these cards that I
have built up.
They appear to have been sold to the troops by
enterprising photographers, who took photos
of the ships at the dock and added the wording
"Ship That Brought Us Home" to the photo negative.
These cards do not appear to have been issued by the JWB.
I have rarely seen these in used condition, which points
to them being perhaps an on-dock item sold to the
returning soldiers as a souvenir.
Some of these photo images were sold in large size (aka "yard long" photos). I have seen these on eBay and own one or two.
-
The American Recreation Association (ARA) issued various
real photo postcards showing aspects of the overseas trips during
the First World War.
Some of these cards show the ships. They are not common. Here
is a ARA real-photo picture postcard of the troopship Leviathan
.
-
Some of the ships are depicted in
picture postcard folders of WWI troopships. These
folders have multiple images, usually in a accordian-fold
format. The link above is to the front cover of the
folder for the U.S.S. Troy. Some of the images
from this folder, however, are NOT of this ship, but
appear to be of the Leviathan. Publishers of that
era were in a hurry to sell something (anything)
to a soldier, and these folders
may have been "generic" with only a few ship-specific
images added.
This trend is also seen with the many folders sold
at the Army camps in the US. The cover would be reprinted for
a particular camp, but the images and contents were not specific
to any camp.
- Finally, I've seen a number of real-photo troopship cards that are not identifed as to publisher.
