Postal history covers and entire letters saved from the wreck of the Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Company’s (P&O) steamer Ava1 are well-known to Indian postal historians, especially those specializing in 19th century mails. These are also sought after by collectors of worldwide maritime disaster postal history. As Hoggarth and Gwynn (2004) make it clear in their monumental work:
The wreck of Ava is the first mishap from which collectors can reasonably hope to acquire a cover with a wreck cachet – and a very attractive cachet it is too.2
Almost all covers recovered from this wreck were sent to their recipients ‘as is’ with the wreck cachet being applied on them (Figure 1).
I have written about and made online presentations on this subject earlier; readers are requested to refer to them to get more background information.
In this article, I will discuss something that I have not covered before – an ‘ambulance’ envelope which forwarded a patient (!) – i.e. a cover in a much damaged state – from this wreck. It is possible that this was the first occasion when an ambulance envelope was used to forward a wreck cover.3
In his pioneering work, Hopkins (1967) discusses six covers from this wreck. With respect to one of them, he writes:
The second is really a forwarding cover, as the salvaged letter it contains was too damaged to go on without protection. This forwarding cover bears the cachet “Saved from the wreck of the Ava” and the London postmarks “PAID DV 14 JU 1858” and “B (Crown) V 14 JU 1858”. This envelope is an official one and bears on the flap the printed seal of the Controller, Circulation Department. It is addressed to “Mrs Benson, the Cottage, Hartshill, Atherstone”, and shows the Atherstone arrival mark of 15 June 1858. The salvaged cover which it contains is so damaged and stained by sea water that no postmarks on it are decipherable. One ½ anna blue stamp of the first De La Rue issue remains on the envelope, but it is evident that at least one more stamp has become detached. The writer of this letter was Surgeon Deputy-Inspector-General Joseph Jee, V.C., who won his decoration at the Siege of Lucknow on 25th September of the previous year.
The whereabouts of this cover is not known.4
A Second Ava Ambulance Envelope
Sometime back, I came across another Ava cover along with its ambulance envelope. This is, most probably, only the second-known such envelope associated with this wreck.
The original carried cover (Figure 2) is only a front with its stamp(s), its rear, and perhaps its contents too, having being washed away by sea water. I have never seen a battered cover from this wreck.
The cover is endorsed ‘Per Steamer via Southampton’. Since it has no other identifying postmarks, it is not possible to figure when and from which town it was sent. What is certain is that it was posted from some place in Madras Presidency, possibly from Madras itself, since the red (now almost black) crescent ‘INDIA PAID’ was only applied in post offices coming under the jurisdiction of its GPO.
At least one stamp of 4 annas denomination must have been stuck on it since this was the rate from India to England via the Southampton route at this time.
Mails from the wreck were saved and sent to their respective destinations. This particular cover would have reached the London GPO with the second batch of mails on 11 May 1858 (Figure 1 shows an item from the first batch). Since it was so damaged, the post office had no option but to enclose it within another envelope (Figure 3) before dispatching it to the recipient.
On its front of the ambulance envelope is a crisp ‘Saved from the wreck / of the Ava.’ – undoubtedly, a fine example of this cachet. The front also has a ‘PAID / D T / 13 MY 13 / 1858’;5 this was applied since the London GPO would have noticed the ‘INDIA PAID’, which indicated that the stamps originally affixed paid the letter to destination.
On the rear is a datestamp of Lynn of 14 May 1858. The seal of ‘Controller / Circulation Department’ can also be seen on the flap.
Importantly, the ambulance envelope has the same address as the carried cover i.e. ‘Mrs Edward Brett, Dersingham, Lynn, Norfolk, England.’ This proves that the cover and the forwarding envelope ‘belong’ to each other.
Acknowledgements: Thank you, Brian Peace, for going through this article and your suggestions.
References
Hoggarth, Norman, and Robin Gwynn. 2004. Maritime Disaster Mail: A Study of Mail Salvaged from Maritime Disasters, as Casualties of War, Collisions, Fires, Shipwrecks and Stranding. Bristol, Great Britain: Stuart Rossiter Trust Fund.
Hopkins, A. E. 1967. A History of Wreck Covers Originating at Sea, on Land and in the Air. 3rd ed. London: Robson Lowe Ltd.
Notes
- In brief, on 10 February 1858, P&O Ava left Calcutta with passengers, cargo, and mails for Suez. She arrived at Madras on 14th and took on board some more passengers and mails. Leaving that place the next day and while on her way to Point de Galle, she was wrecked off the north-east coast of Ceylon near Trincomalee on the 16th. ↩︎
- Only a few covers from each of the wrecks prior to this date are recorded; of some, just one is known. On the other hand, Hoggarth and Gwynn assign a rarity of ‘C’ for the Ava wreck i.e. 20-35 covers known. My own personal take is that perhaps 40-50 exist. ↩︎
- This I base on the fact that Hoggarth and Gwynn do not record any earlier-dated ambulance envelopes. ↩︎
- Adrian Edmund. Hopkins (1894-1967) was not just a great philatelist having signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1967. He was also three time Mayor of Bath in 1937, 1938, and 1953. Many, if not all, of his wreck covers, including some from the Ava, were loaned to the Bath Postal Museum. In 2023, the museum closed down and so did its website, which hosted some of Hopkins’ collections (this ambulance envelope was, however, not in the digital collection). Thankfully, the site has been archived by Wayback Machine. ↩︎
- It is interesting to note that Hopkins’ ambulance envelope has a London stamp of 14 June whereas this has one of 13 May 1858. So, did his carried cover arrive with a, hitherto unknown, third batch of mails? Or was it lying someplace for a month before being found and then forwarded? ↩︎
