Old Town 17816 comes up as a 25 foot war canoe, so it should be fairly easy to determine if this is the correct record! If what you have isn't 25 feet long, check the serial number again on the stem at both ends and compare.
17816 is a 25' CS (common sense or middle) grade war canoe that was completed May-June of 1911. It has open spruce gunwales, birch decks and oak thwarts. Thwarts on war canoes are used for sitting. The canoe was originally dark green. It was shipped to Long Lake in the West Adirondacks in NY, and the date is unreadable but assumed to be 1911. Names in the bottom left corner of the record appear to be individuals who worked overtime on this project. You may get a clearer scan-- showing the shipping date-- by contacting Old Town directly and asking that they scan the original record.
Other than giving you the description of the war canoe from the 1911 Old Town catalog and a picture of same (courtesy "The Complete Old Town Canoe Company Catalog Collection, 1901- 1993", available on CD from
http://www.wcha.org/catalog/ and
http://www.dragonflycanoe.com/cdrom.htm on the web.), that's about all I know-- but others here may add information on war canoes they have known and paddled! It's fun to see one at an event, and nice to know there are those with room for them! Image of the scan of this record is attached below-- click on it to get a larger image.
This scan and several hundred thousand others were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. A description of the project to preserve these records is available athttp://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details. I hope that you will join or renew your membership to the WCHA so that services like this can continue. See
http://www.wcha.org/about-the-wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA and
http://store.wcha.org/WCHA-New-Membership.html to join.
More information on the Old Town Company can be found in Sue Audette's book, Old Town, Our First Hundred Years, which is available through the WCHA store and most booksellers, eBay, Amazon, and public libraries.
Kathy