Query: ARNO & Liverpool Foreign postmark

[Michael Dobbs]

I received the following enquiry from one of my contacts in the British Postmark Society:

[color=maroon]I am forwarding the message below in case you can add anything with your FHPS hat on, although - despite the censor mark and addressee's rank - it is not really a forces' item as far as I can tell.  I now know that ARNO is the Association of Royal Nay Officers, current HQ in Bayswater, but maybe they had a Liverpool office during WW2.  With reference to the [first] paragraph [from the original enquiry below] I think - though I am no expert in the field - that he overstates the prevalence on dumb cancels on mail in WW2.  What little I know relates to mail received from HM Ships, while this is a printed paper item addressed to a neutral country, Eire, albeit one to which inland rates generally applied (at least until 1948, as I have a PO Guide from that year). It is addressed to a Royal Marines officer (possibly retired?) at a civil address, apparently a large house - then or now possibly a hotel - from which the addressee had moved on.  The only aspect that puzzles me slightly is the 'Liverpool / Foreign' cds cancelling the stamp. Routeing via Liverpool makes sense for civilian mail from the UK to Eire, given the need for censorship, but one would expect the stamp to be cancelled at the office of posting, as the normal procedure still applied to all civil mail during WW2, as far as I know. Hence my speculation about an ARNO office in Liverpool, posting these circulars at the HPO there.

Any thoughts you may have, or other sources on information, would be welcome.[/color]

This is an extract from the email of the person making the original enquiry:

[color=blue]I have attached a scan of a censored foolscap envelope posted in wartime in 1941 with LIVERPOOL FOREIGN postmark, I have always been of the opinion that in wartime all datestamps were dumb cancels in various forms and so to find such a mark in wartime poses a question which at present has no answer.

I would really appreciate it if you could give me any information about the postmark with regard to usage etc and while I have all the details of the recipient, the censor, and "A.R.N.O" I know nothing of the postmark.[/color]

Thanks, Mike  ;)

[Peter Harvey]

Mike,

I can not say I have seen the postmark and I could not spot it in Collect British Postmarks. If the cover arrived off a ship, I assume it would then be reasonable for the Liverpool Foreign datestamp to have been applied (in port at the port mail office) and maybe sent directly out on a ship bound for Ireland?

Pete

[Frank Schofield]

Mike

A bit more on Major F.C. Law.RM

Major Francis Cecil Law retired on 15th January 1922
At the end of the war he is listed as a Capt. RM at the Naval Base, Buncrana (now Eire) on the books of HMS Helca, Depot ship
His DSC was awarded as a Lieut RM on Gallipoli

The Liverpool postmark was probably used on mail from a foreign (Irish??)  ship docked at Liverpool.

Frank Schofield

[Michael Dobbs]

Thank you Peter and Frank for your responses.

Mike  :)