Quick . . . date this black/white photo of a moving vessel from the archives? It appears to be moving slowly.

See the bollard just forward of the vessel? It may be moored along a lock approach wall.

Someone more familiar than me with locks and terrain along the canal might know the location above.
On the raised bank beyond Number Seven is a row a billboards. Let’s zoom in there.

The ads are for some kind of ale, Ford, Heinz, Utica Club, gum, and something else. Know the year of the Ford depicted?

I’d say it looks a lot like this ad. And Prohibition ended in December 1933.

New York DPW shops in Syracuse did build a Number Seven, completed in 1931, per the entry below from the 1933 Merchant Vessels of the US (MVUS) list. By the way, the 210 is gross tonnage, a volume measurement. It was 110′ x 25′.

So I’m placing the photos as taken in the 1934 season. Number Seven disappears from MVUS after the 1959 issue. Here’s a photo of Number Seven in color and marked as 1965. What happened to it?






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