page_title: History of the British Army postal service
section_title: Crimean War – postal services (1854–56)
hierarchical_section_title: History of the British Army postal service / Crimean War – postal services (1854–56)
caption_attribution_description: English: British Army Post Office, Constantinople (1855)
context_page_description: The postal service of the British Army is today provided by the British Forces Post Office but its origins may be traced back to Saxon times.
context_section_description: In March 1854 British troops together with an expeditionary force from France were sent to Turkey and the Crimea in support of the Turks against the Russians.
  
  Initially it was decided that the normal civilian postal service to Turkey and the Black Sea was sufficient and therefore no British Post Office representative was sent to handle the Army's mails. Mail was despatched from London via the French 'overland route' and onto Constantinople (now Istanbul). There it was handed to the French Consular Postal Service who in turn, passed it to the French Army Post Office for distribution to the British Army.
  Mail from the British Army was despatched on the French packets from Constantinople to Malta. At Malta it was transferred via the British Post Office agent onto vessels bound for Southampton. The outbound system from Britain proved to be both expensive and inadequate. William Howard Russell, The Times correspondent reported: 
  There is always something wrong about our letters. At present the French Post Office here is a receptacle of several hundred letters addressed to the generals, staff officers and officers of every Regiment which the [French] postmaster refuses to give up until some chivalrous person pays £12 (300 francs) for the whole bundle and to take the chance of being repaid by the various persons ... to whom they are addressed.
  
  Further evidence of the problem is illustrated by an officer in the Rifle Brigade, Henry Hugh Clifford, who later won a VC at Inkerman. He wrote in a letter home: 
  I have just received your letter. It was left here in the French Post Office with 12 letters for me, they not having the three Queen's Heads [reference to a 1d stamp] requisite upon them. For the last 3 months I have not heard from England...
  By May 1854, a new deal over the transit cost was struck with the French postal authorities and this partly solved the problem of holding unpaid mail. Mail was despatched from Britain as before but on its arrival in Constantinople British officers handled it, but unfortunately they had no experience in postal matters and there was soon a buildup of undelivered letters.
  
  In the meantime, the Secretary of State for War had received many letters of complaint and took the matter up with the Postmaster General (Charles Canning, 1st Earl Canning). He was informed by the Postmaster General that: 
  with view to relieving the Officers of HM forces in Turkey from the irksome business of superintending the arrangement and distribution of the large mass of correspondence of which mails between this country and the Army are likely to be composed, the Postmaster General has determined upon dispatching an intelligent and experienced Officer of this Department to act as Army Postmaster.
  Edward Smith, of the Post Office Inland Letter Section, was appointed as the Army Postmaster, and left London in June 1854 with an Assistant Army Postmaster, Thomas Angell. On their arrival they set up a Base Army Post Office in Constantinople.
  One of their first tasks was to recover the unpaid mails from the French. This they achieved by using their own money as well as borrowing £50 from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Raglan (1788–1855). A month later the Assistant Army Postmaster, Thomas Angell set up an Army Post Office in Varna in support of the Army Headquarters.
  
  A regular seaborne mail service was established between Varna and Constantinople. In late summer, an invasion fleet of some 600 ships and 50,00 men gathered at Varna creating a shortage of accommodation which prompted the Assistant Army Postmaster to obtain Lord Raglan's permission to operate from the ship Ganges, but the ship sailed for the Crimea before the Assistant Army Postmaster had moved on board. So he established the Army Post Office on the Sovereign which was smaller. This caused him sorting difficulties as his report reflects: 
  Scarcely had the sorting operation commenced (by making use of buckets for letter boxes) when a perfect rush was made aboard, officers, non-commissioned officers and privates came to demand the letters and papers for their 
caption: British Army Post Office, Constantinople (1855)
exif: {}