M is for Maritime Mail
The collecting of maritime mail can be sub-divided into many categories and Paquebot cancellations are among the most fascinating to collect.
Paquebot cancellations were first introduced on the 1 January, 1894. Prior to this date, when a letter was written on board a vessel, a member of the crew would have to wait for the ship’s next port of call, before racing to the nearest post office to buy local stamps to be added to the letter and then post the letter before the ship left port. This arduous process would be repeated at each port of call on the voyage.
At various meetings of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) the subject of posting mail on the high seas was raised and while there were a number of local posting methods and countries adopting their own methods, there was not a universal solution that could work all over the world in a reciprocal manner to all members.
At the UPU’S Lausanne meeting of 1892, it was decided that any vessel, while on the high seas and outside of territorial waters, was its own sovereign territory and so could use the postage stamps of the country where the vessel was registered. Passengers could then write their letter and post it on board the ship. The mail would then be stamped with a mark of the ship’s registry before being transferred to the post office at the next port of call and treated as ‘Paquebot’ mail. The office would show that the mail was posted at sea by cancelling the stamp with a special ‘Paquebot’ mark and then it would be forwarded to the recipient in the normal way, thus solving the age-old problem of posting letters at sea.
From the inception of the mark in 1894 until the advent of air travel, the use of such marks was common around the world, especially amongst the big shipping companies such as P&O and Cunard, whose management realised that by selling picture postcards of their ships on board they could exploit the growing popularity in sending such cards.
A new area of philatelic collecting was created with the advent of the Paquebot mark. The collector could pursue marks by country or by shipping line, and while the use of the service waned with the advent of air travel, the mantle was taken up by collectors who from the 1930s onwards, would send envelopes to vessels to obtain the ship’s cachet and a paquebot posting, thus keeping the system in use up to the present day.
Original article by Mike Dovey of the TPO & Seapost Society.