Mr. E. Gardner Hays was a student at Yale University. the prestigious private Ivy League school in New Haven, Connecticut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University
In February of a year near 1920, Gardner received a postcard from his Aunt Sara.
(We will learn more about the Hays family – I have a dozen postcards that were exchanged between members of the well-traveled clan who owned an industrial plant in central Pennsylvania.)
The overlapping postmarks on the reverse of the postcard indicate that Aunt Sara was sailing around the Mediterranean.
The postage stamps are Italian, so the postcard was probably mailed from the Italian mainland – possibly transferred by paquebot.
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The face of the postcard is a hand-colored photograph of the harbor at Jaffa.
An inhabited port city for over 7,000 years, Jaffa is older than the Egyptian dynasties and the Judaean King Solomon who once controlled the harbor.
Jaffa was seized from the Ottoman Empire by British forces in the First World War.
This Mediterranean port then became a part of British Palestine until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 – Jaffa is now within the city of Tel Aviv.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa
The photograph shows the rocks that impeded ready access to the port – which was much used by large ships carrying cargo and by many yachts and cruise ships that frequented the colorful city.
If the ships could not safely enter the harbor, passengers and goods could be ferried to land by the small crafts steered by Boatmen.
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On the reverse, Aunt Sara notes that the Boatman were ready to be employed when the party reached Jaffa, but “we had a fine day and could land”.
Aunt Sara closes by expressing a hope that Gardner is well, and she sends her Love.
The souvenir of the Mediterranean cruise was preserved with Hays family memorabilia for more than a century.
