by Tom Fortunato
A 2022 Presentation forthe Rochester PhilatelicAssociationMy Titanic
Cover thatMissed theBoat

This story began back in 1986 when I attended the annual STEPEXStamp Show near Elmira, NY. A sign on a dealer’s box caught my eye—
“Better Junk-$10 Each.” I started looking over the covers and the one
below definitely got my attention.
It was the “TITANIC” mark that got
my attention. But why was thiscover postmarked in March of 1912,
one month before the ship actually
set sail? Yes, RMS (Royal MailSteamship) Titanic was builtprimarily to transport mail acrossthe Atlantic, but no mail survived its
only voyage. The investigation
began once I brought it home!

The cover was rather ratty, but
surprisingly full of dated post, transit andreceiving marks.
The French scalloped cancellations dated
3/3/12 were used on train mail of that era,these from the short 40 mile Chars toSerqueux line running northwest of Paris.

The back-stamped receiving marks
show that this letter ended up in a
Paris post office at 4:30 AM thefollowing day, Monday, 3/4/12.

What happened between March 4-18 when it arrived in Washington, DC
is supposition, uncovered through 30+ years of detective work!
The letter was franked with 25 centimes, enough for the standard
surface letter rate to America. Overseas-bound mail from throughout
France was brought to Paris where it was prepared and bagged fortransit.
It was common practice to write or stamp the name of the ship a letter
was to be carried on somewhere on the envelope. The san-serif
TITANIC violet marking was proven to be of the same font and size asthat used on letters posted on its sister ship, White Star Line’s RMS
Olympic, by Dutch typographer David van Dalen. It is not certain
whether the ship’s name was applied to mail at the central Pariscollecting station or later at the ship’s port of departure.

Various shipping lines had specific ports they docked at. The letter
would have left France at Cherbourg if it departed on the White StarLine.

From a Danish travel
brochure of 1912
White Star plannedsailings.

Other trans-Atlantic lines favoredother French ports. The North
German Lloyd and HamburgAmerican Lines preferred
Cherbourg; the French CTG line
docked at La Havre and Bordeaux.

A typical trans-Atlantic crossing to New York City would have taken 5days from these major ports, assuming no stopovers. So the cover’s DCarrival mark provides a clue. The ship it travelled on probably arrived
in New York City on Sunday, March 17, the day before it reached theWashington post office by train per the back-stamp.
From that information we know the ship should have left its last
European port on or before Tuesday, March 12.

Ship arrivals were very well
documented in thenewspapers of the day. Anonline search of the “Morton
Allan Directory of EuropeanPassenger SteamshipArrivals” book covering
1904-1926 resulted in thechart seen here. Most likely
the cover departed via
Cherbourg: North German
Lloyd’s “Main,” BremenSouthampton- CherbourgNew York City.
http://www.cimorelli.com/safe/shipmenu.htm

So to summarize the probabletimeline of this cover…
 Mailed Sunday, March 3
 Arrived Paris, Sunday, March 4at 4:30 AM
 Sent to Cherbourg port
 Left on North German Lloyd’s“Main” (approximately Tuesday,
March 12)
 Arrival NYC, Sunday, March 17
 Arrival Washington, DC Monday,
March 18 at 2 PM Delivered Tuesday, March 19

But that’s far from the whole story,
as questions remained…
 Why was the Titanic marking onthe cover?
 Are there similar covers?
 What kind of business was thisletter sent to?
 Why was this TITANIC coversaved?
Here are some answers!

White Star’s Olympic and Titanic were built at the Harland and Wolff’s
North Shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. As no attempt had everbeen made to build ships of their size before, it was a learning process.
Titanic’s keel was laidon March 31, 1909,
three months after thatof the slightly smaller
Olympic. Over 15,000men worked on the two
ships built side by side.
Eight were killed over
the three year process,half the expected total.

Two years later the Titanic waslaunched, stretching 882.5 feetlong and 92.5 feet wide. Official
VIP tickets were highly prized as
100,000 people were in attendance.

The 46,328-ton steamshipwas far from complete, with
its internal fittings andfamous four smoke stacks
yet to be added.

The Olympic was placed into service
shortly after Titanic’s launch. Themaiden voyage began June 11, 1911 fromSouthampton with stops in Cherbourg,France and Queenstown, Ireland before
arriving in New York on June 21.

The White Star Line announced its
1912 sailing schedule on September
25 for both the Olympic and Titanic,
whose maiden voyage was set on
March 20 following the same routeas its sister ship.

Olympic was about to start its fourthtrans-Atlantic crossing to NYC when it
collided with HMS Hawke in theSouthampton Channel on September 20.
The ship returned to the Belfast
shipyards for repairs to its propeller
shaft, cannibalizing Titanic parts.
A second Olympic collision took
place on February 24, 1912 off
the coast of Newfoundland. On
March 6 Titanic was moved outof dry dock again, seen here, toallow Olympic in. Once again
Titanic parts were used.

Titanic’s maiden voyage date ofMarch 20 was changed to April 10
presumably because of delays due tothe Olympic’s troubles.
 Why was the Titanic marking on
the cover?

One possible explanation is that
French postal officials simply missed
the date change, assuming it wasscheduled to leave March 20.
Although marked in error, mailwould have been sent on the next
available trans-Atlantic ship.

 Are there similar covers?

I began to look for other covers with a similar TITANIC mark on them.
These were the days before the Internet, so it was slow at first, but aliterature search turned up this article by Reg Morris in the 1978
Machine Cancel Society Forum p. 517 titled, “The Sinking of theTitanic.”

I was floored! There seemed almost too muchin common between the two covers:
 Mailed a day apart, March 4 instead of 3,
but from Frejus between Cannes and St.
Tropez on the southern Mediterranean Franked with 25 centimes postage
 Written to the same business and address Same Titanic mark in font and size Same handwritten Dossier number Six-digit number stamped on both, samefirst 4 digits Same Washington, DC receiving mark bytype, date and time on the reverse
 Same MAR 19 1912 receiving mark

So there clearly were more covers like mine, but how many? TheInternet very much changed everything as it slowly uncovered more
information about known covers in publications and auction catalogs. I
started writing articles about these in an effort to flush out more. Info
was updated or corrected as needed in follow-ups as it became known.

As of September 2022
twenty one similar
covers have been
documented. Here aresome of them. All canbe viewed online on a
website dedicated tothem atwww.titaniccovers.com.
Also there you’ll findarticles, auction lotswith prices realized
when known, researchmaterials and a coversummary table.

Part of the current cover Summary Table…

Two non-French covers bear unique TITANIC serif font handstamps.

• Mailed from Vich (Barcelona), Spain on
Thursday, March 7, 1912
• Sent to the M A Winter Company as the others• Arrived in Washington, DC on Sat., March 16• Mailed from Vester Skjerninge, Denmark on
Thursday, March 14, 1912
• Sent to a lodging house in Seattle, Washington• Arrived in Seattle on Wednesday, March 27

 What kind of business was this letter
sent to?
All but one cover was mailed to the M.
A. Winter Company at what is now
1438 U Street in Washington, DC. It
was built in 1908 for $50,000 by Mahlon
Adolphus Winter and his partner,
George W. Faris, to house Winter’s
large patent medicine business. The
British medical publication “TheLancet” proclaimed, “both the M. A.
Winter Co. and its wonderful medicines
are unworthy of serious consideration,”otherwise as snake oil salesmen!

Earlier mail sent to the company gave clues to the six digit numbers seen
stamped on the Titanic covers. These docket numbers were applied by
the company on receipt to identify each correspondence and its contents
and apparently kept filed should they be needed for later use. Thisapparently changed from manuscript to a handstamp between 1910-11.
The Winter’s purple “RECEIVED” handstamp is also found on every
mail piece before, during and after 1912.

Why was this TITANIC cover
saved?
The novelty of the TITANIC
markings on some covers may
have saved them fromdestruction when the company
disposed of their envelope files.
By that time the world knew ofthe fate of its maiden voyage andits passengers. Perhaps they were
horded by Winter employees andkept as souvenirs or sold throughphilatelic channels.

The mystery of thedossier numbers foundon all Winter mail wassolved by Jerry N. J.
Vondeling of theNetherlands in anarticle that appeared in
the Summer 2017
edition of “The Titanic
Commutator” that I
collaborated on. He
found an ad in a 1911
Dutch American paper
recruiting sales people
for their “remedies.”

The French were
especially prone tothis recruitment
scheme, as found by
Vondeling in thisletter excerpt clearly
showing how toaddress a response to
the company about a
job by referencing thedossier number:“Address your letter exactly as you see here. Be sure to write Number-4407-from yourfolder on the same envelope, because we instruct the clerk in charge of our mail to lookfor your number that will carry this personal number. We can, thus, find it without
delay from the hundreds of letters received daily so that I can have it at hand.”Most of the 20 covers were mailed in plain envelopes, however a few areon business advertising covers.

on reverse of cover(unreadable)

Importers of Coal
Briquettes and Anthracite
L. Nouaille – Saint Nazaire sur Loire(port near Nances in NW France)

Harness Maker
Joaquin BussalleuRambia del Carmen,
Number 4,
Vich (Spain)

So to summarize…
 Multiple “Titanic” covers have beenfound, putting initial rebuttals to rest thatthey were intentionally “manufactured”
 A theory exists why the “Titanic” marking
was used before the ship actually sailed
 Probable ship crossings for all 21 known
covers have been researched anddocumented based on cover markings andNew York City trans-Atlantic arrival dates All Winter Company markings have been
explained There is a plausible reason why so many
Winter covers have been foundI hope you enjoyed thisbrief look at Titanic
covers that “missed theboat.”
For those interested, I
would encourage you tovisit my web site
dedicated to thebackground and census
of these covers.
www.titaniccovers.com

There is definitely moreto learn about these
fascinating pieces of
postal history.