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The straight-line ‘PACKET LETTER / SOUTHAMPTON’ or the circular ‘SOUTHAMPTON PACKET LETTER’ (both ‘SPL’) handstamps (Figure 1), were applied at that southern English port on mails arriving on packet boats. I have not been able to find much documentation or literature as to the raison d’être of this stamp. In Willcocks (1975, p. 146), Alan…
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…
The title of this post has been inspired from that 2017 movie’ quirky title: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. For centuries, countries in Europe were at loggerheads resulting in innumerable wars. While history remembers the generals and admirals who won laurels, wars couldn’t have been fought without the poorly paid and much neglected soldiers and…
Figure 1 shows both sides of a entire letter written in mid-1842 on board the ship ‘Rustomjee Cowasjee’, at anchor off “Rugged Islands” (Chusan, today’s Zhoushan Island) during the first Opium War. Briefly, the East India Company was growing opium in India and dumping it in China. Opium was playing havoc with the Chinese –…
