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The information was extracted from “Shipping Wonders of the World” (1935).

The two finest liners on the United States Line’s service to and from Europe are the Manhattan and the Washington. These luxuriously-equipped liners are sister ships, each of 24,289 tons gross. They have a speed of over 20 knots and run between New York and Hamburg by way of Cobh (Queenstown), Ireland. Eastbound, they put in at Plymouth and Havre, westbound at Havre and Southampton.

The Manhattan and the Washington have an identical external appearance, with a straight-raked stem and counter stem. The two elliptical streamlined funnels are widely spaced and painted red with a white band and a blue top. The hulls of both vessels are painted black and their superstructures white.

Internally, the two ships differ slightly. The Manhattan accommodates 1,239 passengers in cabin, tourist and third classes, and the Washington 1,100 in the three classes, as she has a smaller tourist-class and third-class capacity. Each vessel carries a crew of 478.

The great liner Manhattan towers above the tug Steinhoft in Hamburg Harbour. The tug is 82 ft. 9 in. long and the Manhattan 668 ft. 5 in. long. The Manhattan and her sister ship the Washington are on a regular service between Hamburg and New York. These sister ships are identical in every feature except for certain differences in cabin accommodation.

The two vessels were built in the shipyard of the New York Shipbuilding Company at Camden, New Jersey, on the east side of the Delaware River, opposite Philadelphia. The elder ship, the Manhattan, was the first vessel for thirty-five years to be laid down in an American shipyard as a liner for the North Atlantic trade. Her keel was laid on December 6, 1930, and she was launched almost exactly a year later, on December 6, 1931, by Mrs. Edith Kermit Roosevelt, widow of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Launch of the Manhattan, 24,289 tons gross. She was built by the New York Shipbuilding Co., at Camden, New Jersey, on the Delaware River. Her keel was laid on December 6, 1930, and she was launched by Mrs. Theodore Rossevelt on December 5 in the following year.

The Manhattan left New York on her maiden voyage on August 10, 1932. Ten days later, on August 20, the Washington was christened with water from the old spring at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate on the Potomac River. She started on her maiden voyage from New York on May 10, 1933.

When these two vessels were put into service they were the fastest passenger liners of the cabin class in the world. They were designed to offer new luxuries at moderate rates. Before the Manhattan and the Washinqton were built, the St. Louis and the St. Paul, belonging to the American Line, had been the largest American-built ships of their day. The house flag of the American lane, the well-known blue spread eagle on a white ground, is flown by the Manhattan and the Washington.

Children’s playroom in the United States liner Washington. This playroom is aft on the boat deck and is for the use of the children of cabin-class passengers. The decorations on the walls of the playroom and elsewhere in the ship are painted by Aldo Lazzarini. Toys and games of every kind are provided and a stewardess is in charge of the playroom. There is a similar room in the Manhattan.

The dimensions of the two liners are identical. Each has a length of 668 ft. 5 in, the moulded beam of each vessel is 86 ft. 3 in. and the depth to the promenade deck is 75 ft. 3 in.

Motive power is supplied by two sets of triple-expansion turbines geared to two propeller shafts and developing a shaft horse-power in service of 30,000.

There are eight passenger decks in the Manhattan and in the Washington. In addition to the sun deck, boat deck and promenade deck, there are five passenger decks-A to E. Another deck extends forward of the machinery space and over part of the space aft. So carefully has every detail been considered that passengers wishing to take dogs will find on the sun deck large, airy kennels, complete with port-holes and steam heating. The sun deck, between the two funnels, is about 4.000 square feet in area and has a full-size court for lawn tennis and space for deck tennis. Forward is a steel house enclosing the wheel-house and chart-room. The spacious promenade of’ the boat deck is not hampered by the lifeboats. These are carried on patent davits that raise the boats to the level of the aim deck.

Each of the standard lifeboats, which are built of copper-bearing steel, is 30 feet long and 104 feet beam and carries eighty-four persons. Sixteen of the lifeboats are on the boat deck mid four of similar type are aft on A Deck. There are two wooden motor lifeboats aft on the promenade deck. The motor lifeboats are 30 feet long, with a beam of 8 ft. 8 in., and can proceed at eight miles an hour when fully loaded with passengers. The motor lifeboats are propelled by petrol engines and are equipped with radio for sending and receiving messages. Enough fuel is carried to cruise 200 miles.

On the boat deck aft are the cabin-class children’s playroom and the wire-enclosed play-decks that have their exits through the playroom to prevent the children from straying.

The officers’ quarters are in two houses on the boat deck. The captain’s office, stateroom and bathroom are on the starboard side forward, and the chief officers’ quarters to port. Navigating officers, wireless operators and a few engineer officers occupy the rest of the cabins forward. In the after-house are the messrooms and quarters for the chief engineer and his staff.

The eight passenger decks of the Manhattan are shown in this sketch. The sun deck is amidships above the boat deck. F Deck is a small deck extending forward of the machinery space and not used by passengers. The grand salon can be seen reaching from the promenade deck to the boat deck. The external appearance of the Manhattan is identical with that of the Washington.

The public rooms on the promenade deck represent the height of magnificence and luxury. Aft is a café decorated in the Venetian style and opening onto a games deck. The smoking lounge, with its log fire, surrounds the passenger with the atmosphere of pioneer America. The murals  by Lazzarini depict the life of the Redskins.

Forward of this lounge are the Elizabethan library and the Hepplewhite writing-room. Then comes the grand salon, two decks in height, decorated, in the Georgian style and with a large, shallow central dome.

Below, on A and B Decks, are twelve suites, each with living-room, bedroom, foyer, trunk alcove and bath and shower. Standing beds are provided and the Pullman upper berths disappear into the ceiling when not in use. The decorations of the suites are distinctive. The Monticello and Fairfax suites are modelled on Southern Colonial lines. Louis XVI decorations characterize the Marie Antoinette and Trianon suites. The Devon and Stratford suites are in the Adam style and the Marquette and Frontenac suites in the French provincial style. Two Early English suites, Hampton and Rushbrooke, and two in later English style, Kensington and Pembroke, complete the number. All are finished in polished- hardwood panelling or painted panels.

The cabin foyer on B Deck is spacious and has been arranged for use as a lounge. The beauty parlour, manicure parlour and barber’s shop adjoin this lounge. The doctor’s surgery and dispensary are aft, adjoining the tourist lobby.

On C Deck are the main dining- rooms for cabin and tourist passengers, separated by a main galley with service doors at either end. The cabin dining-room is in the Louis XVI style, with mural paintings by Lazzarini, portraying the three ships of Columbus and the landing from the Mayflower. Aft are a number of tourist cabins. Forward are state rooms and shops. The fore-part of D Deck is occupied by crew’s quarters; the swimming pool and state rooms for cabin passengers are aft. The third-class cabins and dining-room are aft on E Deck. Forward of these are various store rooms, messrooms and quarters for the crew. F Deck extends forward of the machinery space and aft only over the after peak tank and in way of No. 6 Hold.

Triple-Expansion Turbines
Designed built and installed by the New York Shipbuilding Company, the propelling machinery develops a normal output of 30,000 shaft horse-power to maintain a speed of over 20 knots in moderate weather. An overload can be developed up to about 34,500 horsepower by the use of extra nozzles on the high-pressure turbine. There are two sets of triple-expansion turbines actuating through single-reduction gearing. Either set consists of a single-flow high-pressure, a single-flow intermediate-pressure turbine and a double-flow low-pressure turbine. Each turbine is in a separate casing and drives its own pinion through a flexible coupling.

Astern power is provided for in every unit. The high-pressure astern turbine is in a separate casing located in tandem forward of the intermediate-pressure turbine. It drives the intermediate pressure pinion through the flexible coupling in the astern direction. The low pressure astern turbine is incorporated in the forward end of the low-pressure ahead casing. The total output of-the astern turbines is 65 per cent of the ahead power. Turbine speed is about 1.500 revolutions a minute for a propeller speed of 125 revolutions when developing 5,000 horse-power for each turbine stage.

For the propelling machinery, turbo-generators, auxiliary feed, pumps and other steam-driven pumps, steam is generated in six water-tube boilers of the Express type built by Babcock and Wilcox. These boilers are designed for burning fuel oil under forced draught with pre-heated air and closed stoke-holds. Pressure in the steam drum is 409 lb. per square inch and 401 Ib. per square inch at the superheater outlet, with the steam superheated to 675O Fahrenheit. The boilers are in two separate compartments, separated by the auxiliary machinery room. The steam generating heating surface of each boiler is 10,500 square feet and the’ furnace volume is 1,262 cubic feet.

Independent forced lubrication systems are installed for the port and starboard propelling units.

Bound for Europe, the Washington leaves Pier 60 on the North or Hudson River in the Port of New York. Her next port of call is Cobh (Queenstown) Ireland. She then goes to Hamburg, pitting in at Plymouth and Havre. Westbound she calls at Havre and Southampton. The Washington and her sister ship the Manhattan attain a speed of over twenty knots.

Independent forced lubrication systems are installed for the port and starboard propelling unite. The oil is drawn from sump tanks under the reduction gears and pumped through duplex strainers and oil coolers to the bearings. A gravity tank is installed at a height to maintain pressure on the discharge system and to ensure a supply in the event of pump failure. Any fall of oil pressure below a certain amount automatically closes the main steam bulkhead valves. There are four lubricating- oil coolers and two lubricating-oil purifiers. There are storage tanks and a reclaiming tank fitted with steam-heating coils, and an oil separator for bilge and ballast water.

An auxiliary space is provided at the centre-line of the ship in the hold between the two boiler rooms. A flat or partial deck divides this space into an upper compartment for the turbo-generators and switchboard and a lower compartment for the condensers and their auxiliaries. The generating system consists of four 600 kilowatt turbo-generator sets, exhausting into two condensers, for which there are two two-stage air ejectors. There are various pumps in this auxiliary machinery space, also heaters and evaporators.

The veranda café of the Washington situated aft on the promenade deck. This large room is decorated in the Venetian style, with iron-grilled windows and painted twisted columns. The veranda café, with its spacious dancing floor, opens directly on to the games deck. The public rooms In the Manhattan and the Washington are examples of the height of luxury achieved in transatlantic passenger liners.

The starting platform is arranged for the greatest ease of operation. All telegraphs, gauges and indicator lights are in convenient positions. The gauge-board bulkhead, is placed so that only the band wheels of the steam valves are visible on the operating platform. The space housing the valves, steam-pipes and strainers is connected to an exhaust fan to eliminate, as far as possible, excessive heat.

401 Tons of Silver
All the details described above apply to both the Manhattan and the Washington. The construction of the ships’ hulls is similarly identical. The steel hull is built with transverse framing. The depth of the double bottom is 6 ft. 2 in. throughout, except in way of the forward hold, where the depth is increased to 8 feet at the collision bulkhead. The flat keel, 4 ft. 8 in. wide, adds less than 3 in. to the moulded draught.

The vertical keel is continuous between the peak bulkheads and watertight except in way of double-bottom tanks Nos. 1, 9 and 10. On either side of the vertical keel amidships there are three  side gilders. The oil-tight wing longitudinal bulkhead, extends the length of the boiler rooms and auxiliary machinery space. Fuel oil, fresh water, feed water and water ballast are carried in the seventeen main tanks in the double bottom.

To minimize rolling, bilge keels, 15 in. deep, are fitted to the shell plating for a length of 250 feet. Frames are 3 feet apart for the greater length of the ship; this is reduced to 2 feet near the peak tallies. Eleven main transverse watertight bulkheads subdivide the vessel. Additional subdivision is provided by the longitudinal wing fuel tanks.

Navigation equipment includes a gyroscopic compass system and a Sperry gyro pilot for automatic steering. In 1934 the Manhattan was equipped experimentally with a fog camera to determine the position of other ships within a range of from three to five miles, according to the density of the fog.

One of the biggest shipments of silver ever sent across the Atlantic Ocean was carried on board the Washington in August 1934. The cargo consisted of 12,125 bars of silver, weighing 401 tons and valued at £1,266,100

The sister ships Washington and Manhattan have established themselves among the most popular ships in the transatlantic service.

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It is addressed to the Post Master, Geneal Post Office, Auckland, New Zealand, the stamp (as always) is washed off. It had been canceled with the duplex SYDNEY / OC 23 / 11-A M / 94 / 36 with the 3-ringed oval ‘N.S.W’. There is a very fine blue 2-line handstamp ‘Saved from wreck of the / “WAIRARAPA” (Figure 1 below).

The reverse shows a fine N.Z. / AUCKLAND / 3 NO 94 / 14 as well as another illegible postmark (Figure 2 below).

The second cover was posted with a duplex BRISBANE / 27 / OC ( ) / 9(4) and is addressed to Customs Auckland N.Z., and readdressed in red to a company. The identical blue 2-line handstamp has been applied (Figure 3 below).

The third cover was also sent from Brisbane with a partial duplex cancel and it is addressed to a solicitor in Blenheim, N.Z. and it has the blue 2-line handstamp (Figure 4 below).

The reverse has a transit N.Z. / AUCKLAND / 10 NO 94 / 1 as well as the arrival N.Z. / BLENHEIM / 14 NO 94 / 1 postmark (Figure 5 below).

The wreck of the ship on the rocks some days after the accident, as well as articles salvaged from the ship, are seen in Figures 6 and 7 below.

The S.S. Wairarapa was one of the Union Steamship Line’s most luxurious vessels, built in 1892, and had a gross weight of 1716 tons. It was employed on the Australia-New Zealand run, across the Tasman Sea, a journey of over 1,250 miles. The vessel left Sydney on October 24, 1894, bound for Auckland, with some 230 passengers and crew on board.

Late on the night of October 29/30 (12.08 a.m.), it had passed the North Cape of New Zealand, when it suddenly encountered dense fog. However, Captain John McIntosh was so sure of his bearing that the ship continued at full speed, to pass Great Barrier Island on the final run to Auckland Harbour.

Suddenly, there was a deafening crash as the ship was flung by the heavy swell on to a rocky ledge. For a moment, all was confusion; the passengers rushed from their beds; Captain McIntosh ordered the boats to be lowered, and the tremendous seas pounded the grounded ship. At 2 a.m., its funnel was carried away, then the boat listed to port and the bridge collapsed. The Captain and many others were swept away into darkness. The life-rafts were cut adrift, and saved many people, and the rest fought for their lives.

On deck, the survivors clung to the ship’s rails for twelve hours, and at last a line was taken to shore by a steward, and secured. A thick rope was then hauled to land, and the passengers attempted to get ashore to safety.

At this point of the Island, the cliffs were 800 feet high, and it was thirty hours before another vessel saw the wreck, and rescued the survivors. In those thirty hours, the survivors lived on oranges washed ashore from the wreck, and the few local settlers also helped with food and comfort. In due course, the S.S. Argyle a small coaster, saw them, and took them to Auckland. It arrived there at 3 a.m. on November 1, and the outside world learned of the tragedy.

There were 117 sacks of mail on board of which 109 sacks were salvaged (another source quoted 98 bags as saved) and 23,224 pieces of mail were recovered, taken to Auckland on November 3, and dried out. Items were then marked with a handstamp reading “Saved from the wreck of the Wairarapa” (in two lines), in violet or blue ink. Items backstamped “AUCKLAND 3 NO 94″ are usually struck in deep violet, but those backstamped on November 5 or 10 are usually in violet-blue. From the beginning, the handstamp had a characteristic warping. A much rarer handstamp has been seen, far smaller, and in black. It is thought that this was the first one to be used, but was found to be too small and indistinct, and so discarded. A cover with this black handstamp was sold at a New Zealand auction in 1971.

The Government of New Zealand has a document on line entitled “S.S. Wairarapa Graves Heritage Assessment 1984, pages 21-25″ with a well documented history of the ship from its being built in 1882 by the company of William Denny and Bros., Dumbarton, Scotland until the centenary of the shipwreck in 1984.

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Perhaps you’re saying, ‘But I know how the post is carried now – it’s carried by van, train, boat or aeroplane, finishing up with a postman on a bicycle or on foot.’ And you’re perfectly right. But did you know that letters also travel by means of pigeons, bottles, casks, tin cans, dog sledges, camels, trams, buses, helicopters, balloons, underground railways and rockets?

Let’s begin with the more ordinary ways. Have you heard of the ‘Down Special’? It is a train only for mails and it is one of the many Travelling Post Offices which roar through the night across Great Britain so that you can have your letters by breakfast-time.

It takes seven and a half hours from London to Edinburgh. Sometimes, on the ‘Down Special’, there are as many as eighty sorters working all night as it dashes on its way to Aberdeen. If you ever stand on station platforms collecting engine numbers you may have seen the apparatus that is used to pick up and put down mail-bags as the train tears through the main-line stations at night. But have you ever seen it working?

Even if you happen to be on the spot it is almost impossible to see anything because it is all over in a few seconds as the train rushes through the station at over forty miles an hour. The arms swing out of the mail train, carrying pouches of letters and in a flash these are dropped into a net and the new pouches, which were hanging waiting for them, are picked up.

The actual picking-up is automatic but it needs very clever timing to work the machine. Just think that not so much more than a hundred years ago the mail-coach guard used to grab a pouch of letters from the Postmaster as he leaned out of his bedroom window, and everyone thought that was the last word in speed!

The very first Travelling Post Office started in 1838, but it was a very slow affair compared with the ‘Down Special’ of today. If you would like to see what one of today’s T.P.O.s looks like inside, you can see a picture of one on a French stamp (1951).

Now let’s suppose you are sailing to America on The Queen Mary (which takes 4 days 20 hours from Southampton to New York) and you want to write a letter to a friend in England. If you post it at the Ship’s Post Office, before you reach Cherbourg, your friend will have an interesting postmark for his collection because the letter will be taken off The Queen Mary at Cherbourg and have the word ‘PAQUEBOT’ stamped on it (the French for Packet Boat).

Do you know why it is called a Packet Boat? In the beginning these boats sailing from England to the Continent carried the packet of State Letters (instead of holiday postcards and ordinary letters as they do today). These early packet boats used to be armed with guns because enemy spies were very anxious to capture them and read the state letters and steal any gold or other goods they might be carrying. Today the word ‘Paquebot’ is normally stamped on all letters posted on board ship.

Now we’ve talked about land and sea – but what about air? Well, in 1919, there was a great event in Post Office history. Ten thousand letters, postcards and newspapers were flown in an aeroplane for the first time in Great Britain. The pilot was a young man called Hamel. This was the Coronation Air Post – from Hendon to Windsor in thirteen minutes – celebrating the Coronation of King George V.

The next big change came in 1919, just after World War I, when the first regular air post started between London and Paris. Soon other countries began sending letters by aeroplane and now airmail services run all over the world and the post travels faster and faster – London to Johannesburg (5,600 miles) in two days! But the story of airmails is a long and exciting one; you can read more about it in Chapter 14.

* * * * *

Now let’s have a look at the way mail is carried in foreign lands. What about the frozen north? In cold barren parts like Alaska and Labrador letters are carried in a sledge drawn by dogs, and the postmen have to carry guns to protect themselves from wild animals.

In outlying villages in Finland the postman comes on a sleigh drawn by reindeer. There is a Post Office in Finland that is only open one day in the year – just for the reindeer market! Its name is Gallivare, but if you find an envelope with a Finnish stamp on it and the postmark has a reindeer included in it you will know it comes from there, even if you have forgotten the name. What a treasure this would be for a postmark collection.

Norwegians who live in the towns and villages round the northern fjords get their post only by ship. One ship is enough for a small fjord but it takes more than twenty to collect and deliver mail all round the largest one.

People who live high up in the mountains of Austria and Switzerland get their letters brought to their villages by Post Bus. These sturdy buses climb up the mountain roads to a height of 7,000 feet in the summer. They carry newspapers, goods and passengers as well as letters; there is no other way for people to get their supplies in the remote places. When the horn of the Post Bus is heard, all other traffic gets out of the way; the mails must be on time. There are post-boxes on the buses and places along the mountain roads where the bus will stop, so if you lived in a lonely chalet high up in the mountains you would have to take your letters down to one of these bus stops when the bus was due, and pop your letter into its box.

Letters are carried by lake steamers, trams and trolley buses, by mule and donkey over mountainous roads where no van can go, and across the blazing deserts by camel. They go down rivers – sometimes through jungles  – in all kinds of strange craft.

In Malaya, for instance, where many places can only be reached by river, the postman uses a Sampan to collect and deliver the mail. You can see one of these on a Singapore stamp (1955). What a fascinating collection you could make of stamps showing all kinds of mail carriers – from pigeons and sailing ships to trains and helicopters. Countries are so proud of their posts that – you can find stamps showing everything connected with letters and parcels. Here are a few of the things – just to show you what a marvellous collection you could make:

Post runners (Togo, India, Nicaragua); postmen on elephants (Cambodia) and on camels (Sudan); Moorish couriers on fiery Arab horses (Spanish Morocco); an Arab courier taking a letter from a scribe (French Morocco); Turkish, Icelandic and Chinese postmen; oldtime German and Polish postmen; a post-woman delivering letters in Hungary; postmen on bicycles (U.S.A.); postmen motor-cycling through Ethiopia and Guatemala; a Postillion (the continental word for a mounted post-boy or rider (Saar); trucks stacked high with parcels (Yugoslavia); mails going by horse-cart (Yugoslavia) and by bullock-cart (India); Austrian and Swiss Post Buses; horse mail coaches (nearly every country shows these, and there are some beauties – with two, four and even six horses); mail trains; mail ships; mail-carrying aeroplanes; postmen emptying pillar- or mail-boxes; Chinese and Swiss Mobile Post Offices, and, of course, Post Offices from all over the world.

There are hundreds more, and a story in stamps such as this, beautifully arranged and mounted, would surely win a prize in your Club Competition.

Before we go on to tell you about some of the strangest ways the mail is carried, let’s talk a little about what is carried.

The usual things are postcards, letters, letter-cards, parcels, newspapers, books and printed papers – but did you know that a live cow could be sent by post? Not long ago a farmer ‘posted’ a cow called Flossie by Special Express delivery and it cost him £3 11s. The stamps were stuck on Flossie’s address label and she was delivered safely to her destination. A goat has also been sent, and a Shetland pony called Tom. What a surprise for the postman who had to deliver these amazing ‘parcels’!

Turkeys, chickens and geese are often sent by parcel post, especially at Christmas – but not alive. Sometimes they are not properly packed or labelled and then they are sent to Mount Pleasant, London – the world’s largest sorting office. At the Returned Letter Section there is a department for perishable goods with a refrigerated storehouse, and lost turkeys and such-like are kept there while the staff try to sort out from torn bits of paper whose Christmas dinners they are!

Everything that has lost its label or been wrongly addressed or badly packed goes to the R.L.S., which has a staff of several hundred people. These men and women have to be rather like detectives to find the owners of the strange assortment of things that turn up there – cameras, false teeth, toys, pound notes, gold bracelets, footballs, bottles of poison – almost anything you can think of that does not weigh more than 15 lb. or measure over 3 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 6 inches. You wouldn’t believe what fantastic things people send through the post – quite against the regulations: white mice and snakes have been known to pop out of parcels. Strangely enough, bees are allowed to be sent but they must be very carefully packed or else you can imagine what would happen to the poor man who had to open a parcel of them in the R.L.S.!

As soon as you have posted a letter or a parcel you can forget all about it, can’t you, knowing that the Post Office will take charge of it and see to its safe delivery? Just stop and think what a marvellous system it is.

The Post Office has always been anxious to become speedier and more efficient, and now it has fleets of red mail vans which, amongst their many duties, carry the bags of letters from the villages to the towns, take mail to and from stations and deliver your parcels. There are also Mobile Post Offices, complete Post Offices on wheels, which can be sent to any part of the country where there will be a large crowd of people, such as an Agricultural or Motor Show. Wherever people are they want to be able to buy stamps and send letters and the P.O. does its best to see that they can.

Now, last of all, let’s talk about some of the very queer ways letters are carried in various parts of the world.

First of all, bottles! Have you ever sent a message in a bottle? We have. We once put our names and addresses in an empty wine bottle and dropped it over the Pont Neuf into the River Seine in Paris. A few months later we had a letter from a French boy who had found it while he was fishing miles away from Paris! This is a very exciting way of sending letters, but the trouble is that you never know who you’re sending them to or even that they will ever be read by anyone at all!

In 1585 Queen Elizabeth I forbade anyone, on pain of death, to open a drifting bottle that contained a message; this must be done by the official Uncorker of Ocean Bottles! The reason for this order was that a letter from Mary Queen of Scots (then imprisoned in the Tower of London) had been found in a bottle on the beach at Dover by a fisherman. The message was for the Duke of Lorraine, appealing to him to organize Europe against Elizabeth.

When Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, it was a big problem how to get secret messages to her. One of her prisons was a house with a moat all round it and a brewery nearby, and some of her friends had the bright idea of smuggling letters to her inside a barrel of beer! The messages were wrapped up in a waterproof bag and pushed through the bung-hole. The brewer delivered the barrel to the house and Mary put her replies in the empty barrel which was called for later. This queer ‘post’ did not last very long; somebody found out about it.

There has never been an official Bottle Post – tides and currents are too uncertain – but a study of ocean currents is made by this means. The British Admiralty supply ship masters with printed forms in several languages to be despatched in bottles. These messages ask the finder to supply information and return it to the nearest British Consul.

There will always be private notes sent in bottles by ship-wrecked sailors and by holidaymakers like you and me who are intrigued by the idea of finding a foreign pen friend in this unusual way.

The Cocos Islands are situated in the Indian Ocean between Australia and Ceylon and the liners cannot teach them because of reefs. Mail is put into casks which are lowered by ropes over the side of the ship and picked up by a small boat. Coloured balloons are fastened to the casks so that they can be easily seen.

Have you ever heard of Tin Can Island? This was the name given to Niuafo’ou, a volcanic island of the Tongan group, because it had its mail delivered in tin tans! These were sealed up, thrown overboard from visiting schooners and retrieved by natives who swam ashore carrying the tins on their backs. They must have been excellent swimmers because quite often they had to go out two miles to collect the tins. One day a native ‘postman’ was carried off by a shark and from that day until the island was evacuated (after the volcano erupted) canoes were used instead.

* * * * *

And now back to England for another strange and wonderful way of carrying mail.

Seventy feet below the busy streets of London is an Underground Railway run by the Post Office. It is the only one of its kind in the world and was begun in 1927. There are six and a half miles of it, carrying letters from Paddington to the G.P.O. and beyond. It travels at about thirty-five miles an hour and it needs no driver; it is all worked by electricity. The bags of mail are sent down from the surface to the eight ‘stations’ by conveyor belt. Mail can go from East to West London in twelve minutes and is never held up by fogs or traffic jams.

Although no official post has yet been sent by rocket, there have been hundreds of experiments. Thousands of letters have soared into the air, some landing safely, some slightly scorched, and many crashing to earth, lost for ever. But who knows, one day there may be an official Rocket Mail.

The first rocket ever to carry letters was launched by an Austrian named Schmiedel in 1931. Then Zucker, a German, tried to send mail from the Isle of Wight to the English coast by rocket in 1934. This crashed. Two years later an American one crashed when carrying 6,000 letters.

These early rockets were fired by explosives and landed by means of a parachute which opened when the missile descended. The letters were carefully sealed in an asbestos cover in the nose. In 1957 the Americans successfully sent five rockets, each fourteen feet long, from Nevada to California. Each carried 1,000 letters in a specially designed fin.

Perhaps in your lifetime letters may be sent to the moon – or even to other planets!

A well-known scientist has prophesied that in a hundred years the earth will be surrounded by a whole family of satellites and that some will have taken over the mailman’s job. He says, ‘They will receive messages radioed up to them while they are over one city, country or continent and play them back while above others.’ A hundred years is a long time! But we can be pretty sure that the mails of the world will go on travelling faster and faster, and that every year will bring new and exciting developments.

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Pictures:

1. Coat of Arms of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
2. BB SMS Viribus Unitis at Trieste
3. CA SMS Kaiserin und Königin Maria-Theresia
4. CL SMS Novara
5. Emperor Francis Joseph I.
6. BB SMS Viribus Unitis
7. Austro-Hungarian Sailor
8. CA SMS Erzherzog Karl
9. BB SMS Zrinyi
10. Emperor Francis Joseph I.
11. BB SMS Radetzky
12. CL SMS Admiral Spaun
13. Austro-Hungarian Minesweeper
14. Admiral’s Barkass in front of BB SMS Viribus Unitis
15. Austro-Hungarian Ensign
16. BBs at Pola
17. BB SMS Tegethoff
18. Austro-Hungarian DDs
19. BB SMS Radetzky
20. Emperor Charles I.
21. BB SMS Prinz Eugen
22. CA SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand
23. DD SMS Warasdiner
24. BB SMS Tegethoff after turrets
25. Emperor Charles I.
26. CA SMS St. Georg
27. CL SMS Zenta
28. Charles I. visits SMS Viribus Unitis
29. SMS U-6
30. Lieutenant Commander Georg Ritter von Trapp
31. BBs and CAs at the Damaltinian coast
32. BB SMS Viribus Unitis firing a salvo
33. Battledamage on an Austrian cruiser
34. Austrian CLs
35. Grandadmiral Archduke Charles Stephen
36. BB SMS Viribus Unitis torpedo net
37. BB SMS Szent Istvan
38. Port of Pola
39. Austro-Hungarian Navy Plane
40. Admiral Miklos Horthy
41. Austrian Fleet
42. BB SMS Viribus Unitis sinks at Pola Harbor
43. BB SMS Szent Istvan rolls over near Premuda
44. Standart of the Austrian Emperor

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USS Colorado, 1923

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Pakistan was under the false impression that the locals would want and respond positively to a takeover by their forces. However, the local people had tipped off the Indian forces and on August 15th, Indian forces crossed the ceasefire line. This area between India and Pakistan has been under dispute since the separation in 1947 when war broke out on the 22nd October 1947. This war came to a close 1st January 1949. Negotiations between India and Pakistan began and lasted until 1954 without resolving the Kashmir problem. Pakistan controlled part of the area, Azad (Free) Kashmir, while India held most of the territory, which it annexed in 1957.

Concerning the 1947 partition, Michael Koldner wrote:

According to Alastair Lamb, it seems likely that Lord Mountbatten, the British Viceroy, engineered Partition in such a way that Jammu and Kashmir would go to India. At the very least, it seems evident that he tampered with the process sufficiently to leave that option wide open. By allocating the Gurdaspur district of the Punjab to India, even though it ought to have gone to Pakistan by the logic of Partition, the possibility of Jammu and Kashmir joining India was left open. Had Gurdaspur gone to Pakistan, there would have been no land-route connecting India to Kashmir. The evidence seems to suggest that Mountbatten meddled with the proceedings of the Radcliffe Commission, whose job it was to assign territories to either Pakistan or India. At best, his intention was to give Maharaja Sir Hari Singh a real choice of which Dominion to join. More likely is the assertion that he intended India rather than Pakistan to be the guardian of the Northern Frontier because he had more trust in India’s secular leadership (http://www.defencejournal.com/nov98/indkashmir.htm).

In this second conflict, Pakistan had seriously underestimated India’s ability to respond. The war eventually spread to the Punjab and after an indecisive battle in the Sialkot region, both countries agreed to a UN mandated ceasefire which took affect on the 23rd September 1965. The ceasefire and the Tashkent Declaration of 10 January 1966 brought the two sides back to their original positions prior to the crises. The war was, more or less, a wasteful mistake.

Much has been written by the media of both sides of the conflict which has slanted the issues to their point of view. Fortunately the scope of this article concentrates upon the postal history aspect and thus does not attempt to make any kind of judgment one way or the other.

Indo-Pakistan War 1971
The third war that broke out between India and Pakistan had a different basis than the previous conflicts. Here Pakistan had failed to accommodate East Pakistan’s demands for autonomy in 1970 which in turn led to a secessionist demands in 1971. India provided active military support to those wanting to separate and war broke out on 22 November 1971, lasting until 17 December 1971. The immediate affect of this conflict was the birth of the new independent nation of Bangladesh. The Pakistani military was soundly defeated and the President Yahya Khan resigned and was replaced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Fig 1a has been registered at Shershah Colony Karachi 31 August 1965 as indicated by the manuscript marking on the front and by the three strikes of a double circle cancel on the reverse (Fig 1b). The cover has not received a censor mark and shows on the reverse a double circle Providence R.I. Reg Div cancel dated 5 Sep 65 and a double circle Providence R.I Annex USPS cancel of 7 Sep 65. Postage R1 22 annas.

Figure 1a

Figure 1b

Figs 2a and 2b. Cover from Karachi to Providence, R.I. USA. This is cancelled Shershah Colony Karachi by both a double circle and a straight line cancel. Registered 27 September 1965 in manuscript with a boxed K — 128 in purple which may be a censor’s mark. The single line date Oct 4 1965 is probably a Foxon Co receiving mark. On the reverse (Fig 2b) is a double lined Pakistan censorship mark and a double lined circular Providence R.I. REG DIV dated 3 OCT 1965 and a double lined circular Providence R.I Annex USPS dated 4 OCT 1965. Postage R1 75 Paisa

Figure 2a

Figure 2b

Fig 3 was taken from the internet and shows an oval Pakistan censor T I. Passed in Violet ink dated Oct 1965. Postmark appears to read Temporary P.O. The delivery Postmark is dated 19 OCT 1965. Censor applied at Chittagong. After the 1971 war Chittagong became part of Bangladesh.

Figure 3

Fig 4. Cover with double circle Chittagong cancel dated December 1965 with C-1 (Chittagong censor) in rectangle. Delivery date 18 December 1965.

Figure 4

Fig 5. Aerogramme sent from Satellite Town, Rawalpindi To Hobart Tasmania. Two double circle Cancels of Satellite Town on front along with KR-248 (Karachi censor) in rectangle. On the reverse is a oval Pakistan Censorship and an opened by censor in a rectangle. Postage 90 Paisa.

Figure 5

Thanks
Nina Dowden for the genesis of this article. Nina kindly sent a number of covers for consideration and these immediately took my eye.

Information Received
In AJP No 94, December 2005, William Hempel asked on behalf of Poul Larsen regarding the vessel which carried the postcard from Perth, WA, which was illustrated on page 25.

Frank Gerlcevich from Como, WA, sent the following information:

Re. Query on ship from Fremantle to Denmark…I rang the WA Maritime Museum and received the following information.

The ship “GERA” of the Norde Deutsche Lloyd line arrived in Fremantle on Sept 23, 1898, after traveling down the east coast of Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide to Fremantle.

Its probable sailing date was Sept 25, 1898 en route to Europe via the Suez, Genoa, Antwerp and onto Hamburg.

Unfortunately the records are not complete, but these dates tie in with the Ship Mail Room, Perth of Sept 24, 1898 and the arrival in Denmark, 21 Oct 1898.

If you have a query, ask the members through your journal. There is a lot of knowledge out there.

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The new pride of the French Merchant Marine, flagship of the French Line, had left Havre, France, on May 29th, for its maiden voyage. Great interest throughout the world had been shown in the new giant ship, and so it was that the world’s largest ship brought the world’s largest philatelic seapost mail to the world’s largest city. So great was the accumulation of both philatelic and regular mail, in fact, that until Sunday, June 2nd, the day before the liner docked in New York, mail clerks were kept busy cancelling the covers.

The cancellation machine, with its special S/S “NORMANDIE” VOYAGE INAUGURAL canceller is of the standard rotary type and is built in a special compact form to fit the needs of ship mail. Letters of all sizes and shapes are handled with equal ease in this newly improved device, which was designed for special use on the ship.

Above: corner card of the official French Line cachet covers

A brief talk with the mail clerk in charge of operations assured us that the work, while long and arduous, was completed as the boat came up the bay to its berth in New York harbor. The accompanying illustration shows the last cover mailed on this maiden voyage.

French collectors, who had an equal interest in the philatelic affairs of the boat, had mail aboard furnishing an additional 5,000 covers. A third group of philatelic mail completed the roster of non-commercial pieces. Several large advertisers, realizing the value of stamp publicity, added their quota of special material. One house, however, made the unfortunate mistake of “punch-holing” all its copies of the special government adhesives before applying them to the envelopes.

Above: last cover mailed on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Normandie, and autographed by various Normandie officials.

The official French Line cover, used on all collector mail ordered from the French Line Philatelic Agent, was a three color envelope, with the design of the Normandie seal outlined in gold as the central figure. A house adhesive, or advertising stamp, of the line was also added on the reverse of the covers.

The last cover placed in the cancelling machine was held out of the regular mail and given to one of the officials. It is illustrated here, with the special permission of the French Line. The cover was passed among various officials who had had some part in the handling of the Normandie, and each of them added their autographs.

Above: mail receiving cancellation aboard S.S. Normandie.

The Normandie stamp, especially issued by the French Ministry of Posts, to mark the entry of the new liner into service, is blue, following the usual color for that denomination in French stamps. The design as engraved by the celebrated artist, Decaris, from a drawing by Albert Sebille, noted marine artist.

The Normandie carries six radio units and broke the records for radio messages received and sent on her first trip over. Her call letters are FNSK.

The Normandie left New York for the return voyage on Friday, June 7th. Although her operators had said that no attempt would be made to establish records on the eastbound trip, the ship made 711 miles in 21 h0urs, averaging 30.91 knots between noon Saturday and noon Sunday. The former record was held by the North German Lloyd liner Bremen, reported as a total of 688 miles, averaging 29.09 knots for her best day’s run on March 8, 1934.

Madame Lebrun sent a message of thanks to Mayor La Guardia for New York’s cordial reception.

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