USS Olympia at Murmansk 1918

[Howard Weinert]

Illustrated is a cover sent from Murmansk to New York by Alexander Simon Holzwasser [1896-1943], a seaman on the USS Olympia. The enclosed letter is dated Sept. 10 and the censor mark is dated the next day. The Olympia arrived in Murmansk on May 24, 1918 and left on Nov. 13 for Invergordon, Scotland.

Question: Has anyone seen this censor mark before? The censor filled in the date in the British style with day first, which made me think a British officer censored this letter. But another cover from the same correspondence has the date in American style. Any thoughts?

[Tony Walker]

Hello Howard

The answer to your question is no.

I have a number of items from Murmansk at that time, but none have that censor mark.  I checked in Gould's handbook and there is no censor mark like yours recorded there.  Whilst that does not mean it is not a British WWI naval censor mark as new finds occur all the time, it does suggest it is more likely to be American.

Almost certainly there would have been close communications between the British ships at Murmansk and the Olympus, it was a fairly inhospitable place to be, especially in the winter.  As to the two ways of recording the date, who knows?  The dates seem to be on the same day too and in the same hand, maybe someone just covering both options.

Cheers
Tony

[Frank Schofield]

Howard

According to the Curtis R Kimes book -  Pictorial of World War I United States Fleet Handstamped Censor Markings, published in 1995

He allocates this mark to "Olympia" (CL15)

Frank Schofield

[Howard Weinert]

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the ambiguity. The close-up of the censor mark is from my illustrated cover. The other cover I mentioned is not in my collection.