Lots of regular members use this discussion forum to ask questions and to seek help with research, all great stuff, but this discussion forum could be so much more?
Given that most philatelic societies (including the FPHS) are taking a forced meetings break, at least until August, I thought I would start to list my 'Cover of the day' on here and hopefully encourage others to do the same, allowing others to check the forum on a regular basis and see what is being listed. So if you have a cover you might want to list, can I encourage you to do this. You don't have to ask questions, you just might want to show a nice cover, list something you are researching or show that 'gem' you have been hiding away.
So my 'Cover of the Day'
1915 Cover with neat 'X' Royal Navy type obliterator and with the violet cachet PASSED BY CENSOR E.M.W.H.
The initials are those of Edward. M.W. Hearn a Royal Navy Surgeon serving in the Dardanelles (listed by Gould) at this time based from HMS Reliance I think?
My cover of the day a folded letter which is one of the earliest items I have in my Royal Marines collection. The letter is dated August 22nd, 1765.
It was posted by a Marine officer Captain Thomas Pemberton. The letter is mostly about outstanding monies owed to Captain Coles but also interestingly mentions Generals Holmes and Lowther who were the two commanding officers of the ten Marine Regiments which were formed in 1739 then finally placed under the control of the Admiralty.
The letter is tied with a Dockwra-type Government Penny Post mark with the office abbreviation W for Westminster And TH for Thursday and a Circular time mark for the Temple Post Office, 3 o'clock. It is also signed "Balemen" in script by the receiving officer at the Temple office.
Hi Peter
Great idea ! We are lucky to have a hobby which can continue whilst under 'house arrest'. Will post something in due course.
We MUST try and get more members using the Forum. I'm not sure why so few do At this time is is a great way to keep the Society alive and functioning.
Cheers, keep healthy everyone
Tony
Totally agree, great idea. I will go through my covers and find some mysteries.
My cover of the day.
A picture postcard which has been drawn by hand with ink and a watercolour wash. The postcard was posted by a new recruit of the Wiltshire Regiment who is based The Barracks, Devizes, Wiltshire to his mother telling her he got there safely. The card is dated for the 8th December 1917 and is tied with a Barracks Devizes dated handstamp.
Here is the front of the card :-\.
Great idea. Gives us something to look busy with round the house ..... ;)
Here's an AMLC (1942 Xmas issue, I think, with the red diagonals) used in September 1943. The writer is Sub-Lt. G.E.Moxon, RNVR, serving aboard HM LST 409, writing to his parents. The postmark is US APO 758, 28th September 1943, which was then at Palermo. In an earlier AMLC dated 14th September, he refers to doing a spot more invading. The Salerno landings took place on 9th September. A point of interest, perhaps, for postal historians, is the comment he makes in the AMLC here that '.... these air letter cards are frightfully scarce just now...'. That might be why he's (mis)using a Christmas 1942 AMLC. He goes on to ask that his mum and dad send him a few blank air letters.
I also found a picture of LST 409 in harbour at Palermo on the internet.
chrs
N
Well that is a great start and others to come by th look of it.
I think Chris make a great point that the history behind a cover, or the value of an item may also be significantly by virtue of what it is in the first place. Someone hand drawing a tank on a postcard, whilst they were on the Western front is a great example, not only of the task, but what he was seeing. I doubt many civilians had seen a tank at that time?
Nick, I agreed with the writer these priority air letters are scarce, I missed a bundle at auction a few years back (I honestly forgot to bid on the lot and I was in the room). I had a few from Malta (Army) but can not say I have seen an RN one, let along an LST one.
Best I go and find another cover of the day !1
Okay, here is my second item, or cover of the day. Its a bit philatelic I know but the combination is very nice and given that it is 1937.... not your traditional first day cover.
A 1937 Coronation Cover (12 May was the Coronation day) franked to the front (incorrectly) with the British Forces 5th series Letter Stamp SGA9 and the Egypt Army Post large 10 Mills SGA13 - technically the Egypt Army Post stamp replaced the use of letter seals. Both neatly cancelled with the MPO CAIRO date stamp.
To reverse the senders address General Staff HQ B.T.E. Cairo.
The point that attracts me particularly to military postal history is indeed, as Chris and others mention, the context and story behind an item. Not all items of course, but the internet does allow us to ferret around and sometimes turn an innocuous cover into a special one. So I'll give you the story behind this one to help you pass the time away.
My father fought in both wars, in WWI with the RNAS Armoured Car Division in Russia in 1917/18, a fact I did not learn from my mother until many years into my WWI British Navy postal history collecting, when she produced a photograph album of pictures he had taken during his trip, there was just one philatelic item there, illustrated below, but close to a hundred photographs.
Harry Walker landed at Archangel in mid July 1917 with a party of around 50 men plus vehicles, spares, supplies etc. to form a 'Care and Maintenance' force for the forthcoming winter. The party entrained at Archangel en route for Kiev which was the forward base of the Armoured Cars at this time. St Backmatch (the PPC) where the party made one of it's frequent stops to take on water and wood for the train is between Kursk and Kiev some 270 miles to the southwest.
The handwritten date in the message on the postcard is 30 July 1917, some two weeks since he landed at Archangel, so he was passing through here on his way to Kiev. However Russia was in the throes of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Austrian/Hungarian offensive on the Galician Front was advancing rapidly, and Commander Locker Lampson withdrew back to Kursk to set up the over-wintering base. Receipt of the PC in Norfolk is noted as 1st PC Sunday Oct 27 - 17 at the top. There is a rectangular Russian censor mark and a machine cancel on the two Russian 2 kon stamps.
For those stalwarts who braved the Coronavirus last Saturday and came along for the meeting at the UJC, I apologise for repeating what you will have seen if you follow posts on the Forum. I'll add a couple of PO Walker's photographs which are relevant to item. No apologies for the waffle, what else can we do these days.
Tony
Hopefully here is an illustration of Harry Walker's postcard to go with my earlier post
Cheers
Tony
Hello Tony
I still have a couple of your excellent articles for forthcoming publication. This is a brilliant item, would be very interested in publishing as a short piece or full blown article over to you.
Chris
I illustrate a new collecting interest as my cover of the weekend,
POW Card from the American controlled camp in Siberia.
Chris
Here's mine for today: a very ordinary looking naval tombstone censor item. You wouldn't give it a second look, would you? Turn it over, and the return address is Naval Party 100.
Before the internet, that would have been a dead end for most folks: at best a day at the Naval Library, with all the associated inconvenience. However, see https://www.naval-history.net/xBW-RNNavalParties.htm and here's the entry for NP 100:
100 British Naval Base Personnel Northern Russia & Murmansk – Polyarnoe – by 08.41 – returned UK 20.10.1945 – disbanded 11.12.45. (NP 100 – HMS SPICA Polyarnoe. Commissioned 01.07.44 – 20.10.45.
8)
chrs
N
Chris
Interesting that a Hungarian POW writing to his Mother is doing so in German!
Chris,
Can you give some more detail - 1929 datestamp?
Nick
[b]Naval Party 100[/b] - just for confirmation I list below my references for NP 100 - obtained from The National Archives (ADM files)
Admiralty: Naval Staff, Operations Division: Lists of Minor War Vessels (Red Lists)
The red lists were printed at regular intervals, usually weekly. They listed all the minor war vessels in home waters under commands and included the vessels of allied countries. Details of all these vessels, including those being built or under repair, were given and their accounting bases listed.
NAVAL PARTY 100
British Naval Base personnel, North Russia and Murmansk
Location : Murmansk, Russia
Accounting base : (not given)
RED LIST as at 5pm 11 Oct 1944 [TNA document ADM208/28]
RED LIST as at 5pm 5 Nov 1944 [TNA document ADM208/29]
RED LIST as at 5pm 26 Nov 1944 [TNA document ADM208/29]
RED LIST as at 5pm 3 Dec 1944 [TNA document ADM208/30]
RED LIST as at 5pm 7 Jan 1945 [TNA document ADM208/31]
RED LIST as at 5pm 21 Jan 1945 [TNA document ADM208/31]
RED LIST as at 4 Feb 1945 [TNA document ADM208/32]
RED LIST as at 4pm 30 Jun 1945 [TNA document ADM208/37]
RED LIST as at 3pm 28 Jul 1945 [TNA document ADM208/37]
RED LIST as at 4pm 5 Jan 1946 [TNA document ADM208/43] [not listed]
Mike :)
Hope everyone is well, great to see some fascinating covers and cards being posted under this topic heading, would be great to see some other members join in. As previously said, please lt us all see some of your collection material and tell other members some details about what you are listing, does not need to be rare, expensive or even unusual, more of a cover that you like, means something to you and maybe has a story behind it.
Here is my cover for the day....
A 1964 cover from Kampala posted to RAF El Adem BFPO 56 to reverse is shows Tripoli (machine) 8.XI.64, Benghazi Libya 10.11.1964 and Tobruk Libya 21.11.64 then on arrival Field Post Office 246 12 NO 64. FPO datestamps are not that often used for arrival, so unusual in that way and these countries are all so different today, I am certain a cover would never be handled this way in the modern postal systems.
Pete, the date inside the cds part is January 1920. A nice combination of nations, there, though: German, Hungarian, American and Russian.
And: Chris, your WW1 card with the tank drawn on the front: that postmark is not at all familiar to me. Is it a new discovery?
chrs
N
Nick,
Now you come to mention the postmark. I have not seen it before getting this card and will have a look into it.
Chris
My cover of the day. This is a secret hand message cover sent from the Royal Navy Command to the USS Scott with orders I should think. The official boxed cachet on the cover is tied with a "seal of his Majesty's ships" RN wax seal.
When I saw this on eBay I thought why send messages by hand from the RN to a US ship? So I won the cover and having just got it I have just found out why after a little digging.
The USS Scott (DE-214) was a Buckley-Class Destroyer Escort. From November 1943 until the 4th October 1944 she was assigned to the New York to Derry transatlantic convoy route as an escort. In that time she made 16 crossings without incident.
Hello Alan
Thanks for this, my knowledge of German is non existent so had not clicked this.
Chris
Here's mine for today:
This is from Instructor Captain W.I.Saxton, the Fleet Education Officer of the Mediterranean Fleet. He is Listed on the books of Cunningham's flagship, HMS Warspite at this time. However, http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-01BB-Warspite.htm tells us that Warspite was at Alexandria between the 2nd and 8th October, 1940. It seems likely that the Fleet Education Officer shifted ashore at some point – apparently in Malta, presumably to free-up accommodation for extra personnel engaged in more war-like activities.
The date on the Granton-on-Spey re-posting cds looks like 12th October. Apparently we have an 8-day transit surface mail from Malta to the UK. Quite impressive, I suppose, under the circumstances?
By the way, it wasn't me who opened it out.
chrs
N
Nick
A bit more on your Pay/Lieut Pitts
His full name was C.J. P. Pitts, RNVR
Appt HMS President (The Admiralty) on 12-10-1941
25th Dec 1941 transferred to the S.A.N.F (V)
Jun 42 & Apr 44 no ship against his name
Ended the war in a warmer climate with the Eastern Fleet in Ceylon
Frank Schofield
Many thanks, Frank.
chrs
N
Concerning Tony Walker's card from Bakhmach, the postmark and the censor mark were both applied in Kiev.
Thanks Howard (Howard was replying to my post of a PC from Russia)
I think my father must have bought the card at Backmatch when the train stopped there for timber and water - it was his first trip so not surprisingly he wanted to send a card home. But no stamps until he got to Kiev, his destination.
Thanks Howard
Tony