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What you missed at recent meetings….
2nd July 2007
Member’s Displays
As usual the last meeting of the Society’s year was marked by Member’s displays of items of their choice and the following Members brought items to display:
Bob van Goethem: Airmails, special cancels, Northeastern Airways First Air Mail, Hillman Airways London to Liverpool to Belfast to Glasgow, autogyro, Allied Airways Shetland to Aberdeen,
Bob van Goethem: Railway air services including a timetable and advertising, various covers, Airway letter services of the 1940’s, Scottish Airways 1945 then British European Airways 1947 Air Letter service, BEA marks of 1947.
George Goodall: GWR Mini-cards, buildings, trains, road and freight wagons, people and stamps to mark railway events.
Derek Rock: London Underground maps 1930 to 1979 including Beck 1931.
Derek Rock: Cigarette cards 1936 Roses (Wills), 1936 Famous British Authors, 1936 Old Inns, 1927 Period Costumes, 1937 Trees, 1984 Wonders of the Ancient world.
Brian Viner: Isle of Man TT cards, 80th Anniversary set and others showing the bikes and some cars.
Derek Ward: Various advertising cards including Fair Trade bananas, Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance, a cork card from Portugal and notepaper from Caesar’s palace in Las Vegas.
Cyril White: Various sayings including ‘Don’t be afraid to ask silly questions. They are easier to handle than silly mistakes.’
1946 King’s Certificate upon victory given to school children, registered labels (British Isles, Shetland, Germany, Malaya and Singapore), foreign banking items when taking money out of the UK, and an old Highway Code.
The Society passes on its thanks to all the above for making an interesting evening.
3rd September 2007
President’s Evening
The focus of Derek Rock’s talk and display was Australia and he explained that in the first part he would look at the period 1910-1935 or so and the second part would be on modern issues.
The display started with the ‘Roos’ up to 5s and 10s and then OS perfins. The 1913 GV Heads were a mixture of GB and local printings and values of ½ d to 1/4 were shown. There were overprints eg 2d on 4d and OS overprinted. The 2d overprint was also shown in more detail to display the date marks, 1,2,3 or 4 dots in the Jubilee Lines. There were solid and broken lines and some overprint and perforation varieties followed.
Two sheets showed how the sheet was laid out, stamps 2,3 and 4 of plate 2showed metal on the plate. There were then 10 to12 sheets of faults, such as an extra dot, or broken frame and then the colour changes to the 1½ d. There was a cover with a fault in the ST in Australia and a franking machine cover. Each set for the reign of GV was displayed including the Centenary sets and the GV Silver Jubilee issues. The next section featured Australian place names on various cards and covers including a 1907 Balarat ‘ Walter M Hitchcock’ card. The Explorer’s tree featured on a 1908 card from Katoomba, NSW.
Silver Jubilee cards and a Coronation card 1937 were next, then various postcards of Aboriginal Tribes and the 1930 and 1934 sets and then a 200 years commemoration card.
The 1930 Explorers set had various printings and there was a FDC cover from 1980 featuring the flowers named after Captain Charles Stuart. There was the Cook Double Centenary and perf and imperf Ausipex versions. The 1975 sets followed and again Derek featured items with an Aboriginal interest. There was the World Heritage series and the presentation pack with other issues to 1996.
Part 2
This part featured commemorative issues for the Queen, Christmas, Australia Day and the Queen’s Birthday.
The Queen featured on the 1947 set and there were Coronation and Silver Jubilee issues.
Small sets for the Christmas issues were produced at first, but in 1971 there were 7 stamps. The next issues had 2, 3 and then 5 stamps. Then 1986 brought a sheet, miniature sheets and pack. Self-adhesives followed in 1995 and 3 normal adhesive stamps.
Australia Day issues were usually singles or pairs of stamps but none were issued in 1988. In 1997 there were 3 large stamps and then this issue was discontinued.
The last part of the evening was a mixture of items and included the British Empire Exhibition, something that Derek takes a special interest in. Derek showed covers and various cards. There was postal stationery with the whole continuous Crag cancel. A three error cover was shown with Exhipition, the SH in British under the lion is incorrect and it had the wrong date, 1923.
There were Airmail Labels in duck egg and a darker blue, well traveled covers from 1922 Palestine to India, to Belgium with registration number 2, forgeries, a WS perfin, a furniture label with a bad perfin of the 1d, letter cards, out of date stamps for the 1st flight and a philatelic item from 1937. There was a 1966 cover with old stamps, items to India and China, a slogan from the Bank of England, Lloyds Bank labels and the last item was Slogan 1, British Empire Exhibition.
Margaret Emerson gave the vote of thanks on behalf of the Society and Members then applauded in appreciation of this interesting evening.
1st October 2007
UK Crash Mail
A talk and display by Eddie Weeks
Part 1
Eddie started the evening by saying that competition judges would often mark down displays due to the condition of the material and he later added that handling some items of crash mail, could result in damage.
The display started in 1929 with cachets and we were told these were applied by the Foreign/Inland Section at Mount Pleasant. No records have been kept of the types used.
Items from the ‘City of Cairo’ came next, marking the first mail from Australia to the UK in 1931. The ‘City of Basra’ was on its first return from South Africa but as the mail was undamaged, no cachets were applied. and the trio was completed by the ‘City of Washington’. The ‘City of Khartoum’ crashed in 1935 and there was a 1936 Germany crash. On 12th August 1936 the Boudicae, one of three planes of its type constructed, crashed in the English Channel en route from Croydon to Paris. Three sacks of mail were recovered. Examples of the cachets and accompanying notes were shown. Then came the Athena in September 1936 and the ‘C’ Class Empire Flying Boat. In all 28 were built but 8 crashed in a two and half years. The Caistor had an interrupted flight and was diverted. The Capricorn left on 24th March 1937 in fog and snow. The mail was again undamaged so no cachet was applied.
A ‘Damaged by sea water’ cachet of 1937 was shown and a long version applied to ‘Cygnus’ items. Registered mail had ‘Damaged by sea water’ a type in use from the 1920’s. There was a bilingual cachet with rather interesting content, saying ‘ I think that travel by air is just as safe as going by sea through the Mediterranean’ and a Dutch label.
The Calpurnia crashed leaving Bagdad on 27th November 1938 containing mail mostly for Australia and New Zealand. There were different types of Australian cachet and Iraq was spelt Irak. The cachet read ‘Received damaged condition ex Flying Boat Calpurnia’. Again there were notes and letters to the recipients. A newspaper cutting of 1st May 1939 telling the story of the Calpurnia crash has three errors in the photograph, the undercarriage was down in flight, the door was open and the engines are still, so there were misleading reports even in those days!
Wreck covers in wartime had Flying Boat …. In June 1939 the Centurion crashed near Calcutta and a two-line cachet was applied but in some cases the ink ran, as the mail was still wet, and there were also examples where the ‘on’ had fallen off the cachets, which resembled John Bull printing set type.
Part 2
This started with the three Electra’s 11th August 1939, 15th August 1939 and January 1940. A Sunderland Flying Boat crashed on 28th July 1943 in County Kerry. It was carrying a lot of Japanish POW mail. It had a cachet of ‘Damaged by fire in transit’.
In 1944 the Lodestar crashed and there was a Swedish cachet written in English. The Avro crashed in the West Indies and the Portland in 1947. There was a Sunderland crash in Bahrain and an Aer Lingus cachet. Airlines tried to cover up their insignia in the event of a crash.
The Comet 1 crashed in 1953 and there were 2 cachets and again some notes. In January it was outbound from Rome. A red cachet was employed, a war-time one used. ‘Damaged by sea water Comet mail.’ In Italy the date was changed and cachets came in mauve and black.
In March 1954 they started flying again as BOAC aircraft. There was a newspaper wrapper on 8th April with a cachet. The crash on the 23rd July 1954 yielded several mail bags that floated to the surface from 550 fathoms of water.
The Constellation crashed in 1954 and items were placed in ambulance covers for damaged mail. There was a Royal bag of mail on board and this had a mauve, scare, cachet applied. There was a ‘Damaged by fire’ cachet from a Singapore crash and ‘Salvage mail Singapore crash’ with the ai in mail missing. There were covers from Western Samoa and Ireland.
On Christmas Day 1954 a Stratocruiser crashed at Prestwick. Temporary John Bull type cachets were applied. Mail was bound for many destinations eg Venzuela and several types of cachet were applied. In Nigeria three are known. The Comet 3 crashed in Ankara and there were covers to Cyprus, one from Italy.
In 1968 a 707crashed at Heathrow and this had Australia and Israel bound mail and various items were shown. In 1971 a Vanguard exploded over Belgium. A Trident DC9 crashed at Zagreb and a red cachet was applied. There was a Vanguard crash with 2 cachets from France, another from an Inverness flight and a January 1974 forgery was shown on an item to Alaska.
The vote of thanks was given by Margaret Emerson and Members applauded the evening.
5th November 2007
American Space Travel
Talk and Display by John G Shaw
Part 1
John started by saying ‘space is out there’ and depicted items showing planets, stars and comets etc. The UN Charter wanted to keep war out of space and there was a card for peaceful use. Various covers and miniature sheets were shown depicting peaceful use.
There were tracking stations in many places and these were shown on stamps for example Ascension Island and the Bahamas. President Eisenhower, (inaugurated in 1953) lead an organization to develop and discover rocketry for peaceful and non-peaceful means. President Kennedy moved this on with many German scientists taken to the USA after WWII. NASA was Kennedy’s brainchild and it was formed in 1956.
Apollo 11 was launched in 1969 but there had been a lot of development work. It started with satellites Echo and Nimbus and then the lunar orbiter rockets. Project Mercury then Project Gemini preceded Apollo. The space race had begun.
In 1961 the Russian Yuri Gargarin was the first man in space and a sheet of him and the first woman in space aboard Vostok in 1963, was shown.
Items for the Mercury Programme a series of 12 one man rockets starting in November 1958, were shown. All the manned flights were successful. Alan Shephard was the first. Mercury 3 had a 115 minute flight and Mercury 6 took John Glenn into space. Gemini had 12 missions, the first two being unmanned, and various items were shown. Gemini 3 carried out flight manouvres and manual re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Gemini 8 took Neil Armstrong into space. This was the conquest of space and Gemini 5 with a Titan II rocket flew for 190 hours and 16 minutes making 120 orbits.
Apollo brought the start of the Kennedy Space Center. Apollo 7 brought the first fatalities when the crew hatch jammed after a fire on the launch pad. The astronauts make their own mission badges, something that continues today with the Space Shuttle missions. Apollo 11 16th July 1969 was the first manned mission to land on the moon. ‘The Eagle has landed’ . A 30th Anniversary coin from the USA was shown. Many items were issued from diverse countries.
Part 2
This started with Apollo 12 and Apollo 13. The last mission was Apollo 17 on 19 December 1972. Then came Skylab, the Viking programme, which consisted of two spacecraft to orbit Mars and two landers. Rockets became bigger and better and numerous countries issued stamps eg Niger.
A Mars Pathfinder min sheet was shown and NASA envelopes. Pioneer was launched to survey Jupiter on the 6th April 1973 and arrived at the planet on 3rd December 1974. It was then sent on to Saturn, arriving in September 1979.
The Apollo-Soyuz mission was next. The USA issued a min sheet and a hologram item.
Next up was the STS or Space Transportation System, which is known now as the Space Shuttle. The first STS was carried on the back of jumbo jet.
Flown letters and covers were displayed and each mission had a badge designed by the crew. This again brought tragedy with the Challenger and Columbia accidents, the former shortly after take-off and the other on the return to Earth. These Shuttle missions required Edwards Air Force Base for landing. A signed picture of one of the crew was shown. An In Memoriam item showing pictures of what happened and other items concerned with the loss of Challenger (28th January 1986) and Columbia in 2003 were next.
Many sheets were issued by the USA for different launches and events: First Launch, first manned orbit, first repair in space, first pictures of Venus, first flight past Uranus. Many sheets of stamps rounded off the display coming from to list some, Ajman, Grenada, USA, Yemen, Manama, Paraguay, Togolaise and Rwanda.
The vote of thanks was given by Bob van Goethem and all members joined in a round of applause in appreciation of another interesting evening.
3rd December 2007
Grand Auction
The number of Members attending was down even on recent years, but most of the lots sold well. Thanks go to our Auctioneer Bob van Goethem and to Derek Rock who acted as runner.
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