A Rare Real Photo Postcard: Commissioning the Earl Grey

Although I have tried to limit my collecting to postcards with Prince Edward Island scenes, sometimes an item comes along that is too good to exclude. Such is the case when I discovered a card recently offered in the Toronto Postcard Club members auction.

Unlike most of the items in my collection this one is a “real photo postcard” (RPPC). There are not many real photo postcards from Prince Edward, especially from the period before the Great War and this card proved to be a treat both from a technical and a subject perspective.

Real Photo Postcards were made through a photographic process rather than by conventional printing. They put many photo studios and a number of amateur photographers in the postcard business.

Commissioning of the H.M.C.S. Earl Grey in Halifax 1914. Note the iceboat on the stern davits. While the hull appears to be painted in a dark colour, in reality it was white as can be seen in other photos, taken in Halifax and on arrival in the White Sea, posted on my Sailstrait pages noted below.

Although some RPPCs exist from the late 1890s the creation of Velox photo paper by Kodak in 1902 was the real beginning of the RPPC. This paper came with a pre-printed postcard back. That, coupled with a new folding camera design, launched a year later, which produced negatives in the postcard format, made the production of postcards a simple process. A few cards or even a single card could be produced from a photographic negative and could be sent through the mails without an envelope.

Real photo postcards were often created to record local events or places of local significance because they could be produced in small quantities unlike printed cards which required the creation of printing plates and a press run and so were not economical unless a larger quantity came off the presses. More technical information about Real Photo Postcards can be found on the excellent Metropolitan Postcard site 

Because it was difficult to add information to the photo negative, and the back of the card came pre-printed, most RPPCs have no identifying information which can pinpoint the subject, the scene or the publisher.  This makes them both attractive and frustrating for collectors. Sometimes the card message holds the only clues as to the subject of the card.  Such is the case with my latest acquisition.  Although not mailed the original owner has recorded the event pictured: “Hoisting the British ensign, when we commissioned the H.M.S. Earl Grey at Halifax”  The inscription suggests this was a souvenir retained by a member of the ship’s crew.

Back of the Earl Grey card.; The information dates the event.

Even without the inscription I was able to name the vessel. She was quite familiar as in my blog Sailstrait I had done two long postings, one dealing with the Earl Grey’s Canadian history and the other concerning the ship’s adventures after she was sold to Russia in 1914.

The real photo postcard neatly bridges the two chapters as it captures the ship in the process of being transferred to the Russians. On 1 August 1914 the ship was transferred to the Canadian Navy. Four days later she became H.M.C.S. Earl Grey of the Royal Canadian Navy. The postcard is the picture of the official raising of the Royal Naval ensign symbolizing the commissioning of the ship. The postcard shows the ratings in their naval whites assembled overlooking the stern of the vessel while the officers in darker uniforms salute the ensign.

While the card was obviously produced in Halifax and is not technically a P.E.I. card the content is related to a vessel which was very important to the Island. I trust that purist collectors will forgive me.

Note – an earlier version of this page suggested that the vessel was commissioned as the H.M.S. Earl Grey of the Royal Navy rather than the Royal Canadian Navy.

 

 

Victoria Park in Early Postcards

Visiting naval vessel seen from Victoria Park. Bathing huts can be seen just to the right of the seated figure. R.F. Maddigan postcard.

Charlottetown’s Victoria Park was established in 1875. It was carved from a property on the western side of the city designated as the Governor’s Farm.  When Charlottetown was laid out it had five squares: Queens, Kings, Pownal, Hillsborough and Rochford. By the mid 1800s these were becoming inadequate to the city’s needs. Queens Square was occupied by the market and other public buildings, Pownal Square housed the city jail. A chance to set aside public space on the waterfront was lost when the Imperial government gave up the ordnance grounds at the west end of Water Street. The colonial authorities decided to auction the lots off instead of establishing a park. The possibility of turning over part of the Governor’s Farm for a park was raised in 1869 and was discussed during the negotiations leading to the Island’s entry into Confederation.

Finally in 1875 40 acres constituting the westernmost part of the farm  were handed over to the city. The grant excluded the Prince Edward Battery which was retained for military uses. By 1880 the field nearest the harbour was identified as a cricket ground and one near Brighton Road (now Memorial Field) became a parade ground for the several military units in the city.  Access to the park was from Brighton Road because the proposed roadway extending Kent Street in front of Government House was opposed by various Lieutenant Governors until 1896. The roadway to the Battery was completed a year later and was extended to join Brighton Road in 1899. In 1905 additional land was carved out of the Government House Farm and the Park reached the size it has today.

As the premier recreational space the Park was the subject of many postcards highlighting the natural setting and the activities which took place there. First and foremost it provided a vantage point of the harbour with the open channel to Hillsborough Bay.

Charlottetown Harbour from Victoria Park. This view appears to pre-date the completion of the park roadway. R.F. Maddigan postcard

An extremely popular postcard subject was the view from the Prince Edward Battery (usually misidentified as Fort Edward) back toward the city. A single image was used by a number of publishers and others appeared which were only slight variations of the view.

In the early 1900s the military installation was still very much in use. The main army drill hall and other structures were on the east side of Governor’s Pond. The Battery was used by the artillery for both training and ceremonial uses. The 4th Artillery Regiment was particularly successful in Dominion competition and frequently led the country in the national results.

The new Park Roadway in front of Government House opened the Park to easy access from Kent Street. This image or a slight variation of appear on cards from a half-dozen or more publishers. This is a Haszard and Moore postcard.

The Prince Edward Battery site continues to be used for ceremonial salutes to this day. Taylor’s Book Store postcard.

The annual Militia camps took place in the park until the Great War and provided an entertainment for visitors and residents of Charlottetown. Militia groups came from across the Island to set up camp in the Park and engaged in drills and competition while under canvas. The patriotism of the Boer War period made membership in the militia a popular form of comradeship and interest in civilian soldiers continued through to the Great War.

Visitors at Camp Brighton. Carter & Company postcard.

The horse artillery drawn up on the Park Roadway. The white board fence bordering the Government House grounds can be seen to the east of the encampment. Pugh postcard #42-7.

But military camps were not the only users of the park. Although there were limitations on the use of the park for shows and commercial activities which had a paid admission charge, community groups were frequent users.

YMCA Camp, Victoria Park. There were close relationships between the military and groups such as the YMCA. The latter organization frequently had a support presence in military camps. Taylor’s Book Store postcard.

The vast majority of the early postcards images of Victoria Park deal with the natural views in the park.  A number of carriage lanes, some still in use as pathways today, had been opened in the predominantly birch forest and the striking groves of white birches served as both subject and background for Charlottetown photographers. W.S. Louson, whose photos were used by the Toronto postcard firm Warwick Bros. & Rutter was particularly enamoured by the park as a photo venue. [click an image to enlarge or begin slide show]

Warwick Bros. & Rutter postcard #1741

The Three Sisters. Haszard and Moore postcard.

Warwick Bros.& Rutter postcard #2638

The tennis courts can be seen to the right in this photo. Wawick Bros. & Rutter postcard #1741

Victoria Park was a popular spot for carriage rides until the age of the automobile. Taylor’s Book Store postcard.

The Pond in Victoria Park (Deadman’s Pond) In the 1930s as a works project 500 cartloads of mud were dredged from the pond and spread on low areas in the park. Stedman Bros. postcard

Today Victoria Park continues to be the site of postcard views and increased use of the park had led to more and more structures; fieldhouses, a bandshell, and changing rooms. During the Edwardian era the only buildings were the battery magazine, the tennis pavilion and the keepers house. Now it becoming overbuilt and is harder and harder to pretend, as our ancestors did in the beginning of the 20th century,  that the park represents a bit of the country in the city.

 

 

The Three Sisters

In my youth when I began work at the Public Archives of P.E.I. I spent a lot of time on the reference desk.  It seemed as if every second genealogical inquiry began with the words “There were three brothers…”  In the world of postcard collecting the catch phrase seems to be “the three sisters”.

I was intrigued by a Warwick Bros. & Rutter postcard (#5700) with this title. It seemed to be one of a number of their series of sepia cards, but it was far from clear where it was from.  There was no indication if it even showed a scene from Prince Edward Island as there was no other locational information on the card. From the look of the card it could be almost any shoreline or even a river bank.

It was therefore a stroke of luck that the copy of the card that I possessed had a message even though the card itself was not sent through the mail – unless it was sent in an envelope as there was no postmark or stamp. What is remarkable is that the card was dated 3/7/28 which could be as much as 16 years after the hey-day of the Warwick and Rutter postcard publishing came to an end.  The message helps locate the card.

Last Sunday I visited this shore near Campbelltown, P.E.I. The banks are quite high and these points of rock jutting out into the Gulf are called The Three Sisters, evidently taken when the tide was low.

A week later I stumbled across a second Three Sisters card. The card was a Pugh Specialty card and was postmarked 1915. The message on the card was certainly less explicit as to place, but it did reference “all the sights of O’Leary”. The face of the card however, left little doubt that The Three Sisters was a nearby attraction in western Prince County.

 

On Prince Edward Island the phrase “graven in stone” has much less meaning than in the rest of the country. The constant erosion shapes the shoreline relentlessly and once famous formations such as Elephant Rock, Cavendish’s Lone Rock, Wolfe’s Rock and Pulpit Rock have all disappeared.  The same fate was likely in store for The Three Sisters.

But even on Prince Edward Island the name has other dimensions and other locations. A W.G. MacFarlane card of Victoria Park in Charlottetown shows another application of the name but once again fame is fleeting and the park’s white birches are disappearing. This grouping is long since gone.

There are “Three Sisters” groupings all across the postcard world; images of peaks near Banff Alberta, and other set in Central Oregon, in Hell’s Half-Acre in Wyoming, overlooking Glencoe in Scotland, a range in the Blue Mountains of Australia, a group of islands in Lake Superior and dozens of other geographical phenomena.

The main difference between these locations and the rocks and trees of Prince Edward Island is that a century later our Three Sisters have disappeared while the others are truly  set in stone.