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September / October 2008

A Titanic Tale

Mail That Missed the Boat

• APS Awards • Collectors Can’t Share• Daniel Piazza’s New NPM Column
Journal of the Federation of New York Philatelic Societies

Mail That Missedthe ‘Unsinkable’ Boat
By Thomas M. FortunatoW

ould you pay $10 for the cover shown here? I did when I found it in a dealer’s box atElmira Stamp Club’s Stepex in 1986. If you’re like me, you’re probably a bit of a history buff and at first glance are puzzled at this piece of postal history. Here is the tale …
The story of the White Star Line’s RMS Titanic is well known and well documented,
sinking on its maiden voyage at 2:20 a.m. the morning of April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Of the 2,227 passengers and crew, only 705 survived.
Philatelists realize that the unsinkable ocean liner was more than a passenger ship, for
its RMS initials stand for Royal Mail Steamer. Mail was loaded on the doomed vessel atthree points: Southampton, England (1,758 bags), Cherbourg, France (1,412 bags), andQueenstown, Ireland (194 bags). It was the job of the five postal clerks onboard to sort andprepare these for arrival in New York City. All 3,423 bags were lost at sea, a total of about
seven million pieces of mail and parcels. The only surviving postal items were a numberof letters that left the ship during its stop in Queenstown and a handful of cancelled facing
slips used for sorting errors found in a pocket on the body of Oscar Scott Woody, one ofthe clerks. (See illustration on page 20.)Continued on Page 1816

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Titanic — Continued from Page 16
Three identical black postmarks on my cover date from March 3, 1912, with the scalloped rim designating a train letter cancelled onboard the Chars to Serqueux route that
ran through Paris. (Chars is about 20 miles northwest of Paris; Serqueux is about 200
miles east-southeast of Paris.) The envelope bears registration number 267914 stampedin blue and the appropriate 25-centime postage for this service. Two identical etranger(foreign) backstamps confirms its transit through Paris the following day.
Mail was docketed or stamped with the name of the transatlantic ship that it would havesailed on as per the custom at the time. In this case, it is assumed that the 37 × 6 mm brown titanic marking was applied in Paris and the letter then placed in a bag destined for Cherbourg,
the Titanic’s only continental port-of-call originally scheduled 16 days later. Both the WhiteStar Line and North German Lloyd had major facilities at Cherbourg, with ships running theNew York route on roughly a weekly basis. The alternative port of Le Havre about 100 miles
east served ships of the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) Line, among others. Mail contracts were primarily with the U.S., British, French, and German lines.
The story gets murky in determining what vessel actually transported this letter. Ship
sailings from Britain and France at this time were subject to delays due to a coal strike.
Crossings took longer as coal allocations were cut back and speeds were reduced to conserve fuel. A March 1912 calendar is useful in discussion of dates.
SUNMONTUEWEDTHUMarch 1912
3FRISAT

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It would not have been unreasonable for French postal officials to hold letter from March 4
until the Titanic’s anticipated March 20 sailing date, but how could they have not known of its
postponement to April 10 by White Star on October 11, 1911? Holding mail in Cherbourg fornearly a month at the docks would have been unthinkable and mail was sent on another ship.
It was possible to transfer mail from the docks at Cherbourg to those in Le Havre, although itis uncertain whether the post office or the contracted shipping line would have done that.
My well marked cover allows some supposition about its movement. Since it was backstamped in Washington, DC on March 18 at 2 p.m., it is safe to assume that the ship carrying
it would have arrived at New York the day before or early that morning. A review of the “Shipping and Mails Incoming Steamship” listings in the New York Times was especially useful in thesearch, as was an Internet site hosting the Morton Allen Directory of European Ship Arrivals.
Four ships arrived in New York on March 17. North German Lloyd’s (NorddeutscherLloyd) Main traveled the Bremen–Southampton–Cherbourg–New York route, making it themost likely candidate. If the mail was re-routed through the Port of Le Havre instead, theContinued on Page 2018

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Titanic — Continued from Page 18
carrier may have been the French Compagnie Générale
Transatlantique (CGT) SS Espagne via its Le Havre–Bordeaux–New York route. The New York Times reported thatship’s arrival on March 17 while the directory lists it asMarch 18. From there the letter was loaded onto a mailtrain to Washington. The purple received mar 19, 1912
mark must have been used by the M. A. Winter Company
as a way of noting its arrival.
A 20-year search for covers bearing a similar Titanic markhas turned up eight others — all registered and mailed to theM. A. Winter Company in Washington. All bear 25 centimes
postage, a unique light blue registration number, and a purple dated receiving mark on the front. Two others and mine
have a brown-colored titanic mark. The others are reported
as being in violet. They were posted between March 4 and 13
Recovered Facing Slipfrom different parts of France. A manuscript dossier number
was written by the sender on the face of each, some of which are identical. All were received
by the company between March 18 and 28. The recording graphophone manufacturer,
which became the Dictaphone Company, apparently was operated by chemist Mahlon Alphens Winter. The building eventually became the U.S. Post Office’s Station F substation.
Several covers have been offered for sale over the years. The most recent was one
through Britain’s Sandafavre’s Hunters Mail Bid Sale of February 15, 2005. The cover
postmarked on March 5 in Avignon would have traveled with my own. The lot description contains a major error by stating that it was carried on the Olympic, as that ship did
not arrive in New York until March 20. The received making is faint but appears to havearrived at the M. A. Winter Company on March 18, again at the same time as mine. It is
not known if this cover was sold.
The cover census includes another cover posted on March 3, this one from Lagrasse,
Aude owned by The Mystery Box. Besides the Avignon cover offered by Sandafayre in2005, the firm offered a cover also posted from Bordeaux having an unreadable postmark.
Jay Baum of Staten Island, a member of the Titanic Historical Society, has a cover postmarked La Croisille sur Briance on March 6 although the date is in question. Das Kleine
Little Titanic Museum in Munich, Germany, has a train letter cancelled March 7 onboard
the Plouaret to Brest route. Another train letter cancelled March 8 onboard the Paris toOrleans route is owned by the Titanic Museum in Indian Orchard, MA. William R. Simonof Bowie, MD has a March 13 cover from Paulx/Loire-Infres. A cover from Early American
History Auctions has a nearly illegible postmark — the date is unreadable and only theword Loire can be read. The sender was a coal importer in Saint Nazaire sur Loire.
A complete chart showing full details of each cover in the census may be viewed onlineat www.nystampclubs.org/cny_downloads.html.
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