The Steamer That Didn't - Postal History Sunday

This week's edition of Postal History Sunday is a revisit of a very early entry from 2020.  With this past Friday's storms that spread from Iowa down to Mississippi my mind was on storms.  And, to be honest, it was hard to concentrate on creating a new Postal History Sunday from scratch.  But, that's ok - you all know me by now.  There will be some new things in the old blog - and I did select one that the metrics say very few people viewed.  It will probably be entirely new to most of you!

Postal History Sunday is published each week at both the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you are interested in prior entries, you can view them, starting with the most recent, at this location.  

It is time, once again, to put on the comfortable shoes or slippers, get a warm (or cold) beverage to enjoy (but keep it away from the paper collectibles and the keyboard!) and learn something different - and maybe - new!  It's Postal History Sunday on the Genuine Faux Farm blog.

This week, we're going to feature an envelope that was sent from Pennsylvania to Prussia in 1864.  The postage stamps on the cover have three different denominations: 24 cent, 3 cent and 1 cent equaling 28 cents of postage prepaid to get this item across the Atlantic and to its destination.

First of all - it's pretty clean and decent looking for something that is over 150 years old.  People who collect postal history often consider the condition of the item. Old pieces of mail that have curb appeal are often treasured more than those that are stained, torn or have blurred postmarks.

In this case, the markings are pretty clear and I can read each of them.  Examples with clear markings make it much more likely that I can piece the journey this letter took in the mail services.  And... it just so happens there is a story hidden within the details of this cover.  That makes this one a winner in my book!

Mail from the United States to Prussia 1864

At the time this letter was written, Germany consisted of a group of loosely connected states that were moving rapidly towards a more unified government in the 1860s.  As a postal historian, this holds a significance to me because there was more than one postal service to consider for mail being sent to various parts of what we would now identify as Germany.  That story is complex enough for multiple books on the subject, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Prussia negotiated a mail treaty with the United States in 1852 that arranged for mail to travel from the United States to Prussia via ships that would sail to Southampton (United Kingdom).  Mail would then be sent across the English Channel to Ostende, Belgium and run by rail to Aachen (Prussia).  The cost of mail sent via this agreement was initially 30 cents per half ounce of weight, but this was decreased to 28 cents by the time this letter was mailed.  

Since there are postage stamps representing 28 cents in postage and we see the words "paid" and "franco" in red, we can deduce that this item was recognized as being properly prepaid.  The recipient would not have needed to pay anything more to collect the letter and read the contents.

At the bottom left of the envelope are the words: "via Prussian Closed Mail."  The whole idea of closed mail was that the mailbag this item rode in would NOT be opened once the United States sealed the bag until it arrived in Prussian territory.  Even though it saw time in the United Kingdom and Belgium, there will be no markings on this letter to tell us that because they did NOT open the mailbag..  We only know this is the case because that was the agreement between nations at the time.

Hey!  Isn't that a bit too long?

Someone in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania got this to the post office in time for the clerk there to mark the letter with an October 11 postmark.  The letter probably got to New York on October 12, which was too late to send the letter on the next sailing from Boston on October 12 - so they held on to it for the Saturday mail sailing from New York on October 15.  If only they could have seen the future - they would have mailed this letter just one day earlier!

The foreign mail clerk put the New York exchange marking with the October 15 date on the letter (in red) and put it in the mailbag - waiting until Saturday's departure.

And, now, we have a big gap in time before the letter is removed from the mailbag and it has a new marking put on it.

"Aachen 11 11 Franco" - red ink inside of a rectangle, top center of the envelope

This was put on the letter in the city of Aachen (Prussia), showing a date of November 11.  If you will recall "Franco" means Prussia recognized this item as "paid."

But - November 11?  That's a full month (31 days).  Was that normal?

So, what was normal?

Here is another 1864 letter that was mailed from Faribault, Minnesota to Oldenburg, another German State.  Since this letter started in Minnesota, instead of the East Coast, like our last item, it would make sense if it took longer for this one to get to where it was going.  But, this letter left Minnesota on July 2 and arrived in Aachen on July 21, only 19 days.  The postmark on the back shows that the letter got to its final destination on July 22, so a total of 20 days to get from the origin to the destination.

So, this letter took eleven FEWER days, even though it started in the Upper Midwest.  

And here is another letter that went via the Prussian Closed Mail.  This time the letter started in Maryland on May 6 and it arrived in Bremen (another German State) on May 25.  Once again, the time elapsed was nineteen days.

Both of these letters are pretty typical for the time period and for mail that traveled from the United States to a German destination via the Prussian Closed Mail System.  That means our first letter is an outlier.  Something happened to delay it, which means we can do some research to see if we can determine the cause.

The winds did blow

The ship leaving with the mails from New York that Saturday in 1864 was the Saxonia, built in Scotland (1857) and it was placed in service as a mail steamer for the Hamburg-American Line beginning in 1858.  On its previous trip in August, it had crossed the Atlantic from New York to Southampton in eleven days.  In fact, most of its eastbound voyages took 11 or 12 days.  Since the Saxonia had an established pattern, there was little reason to think this particular trip across "the Pond" would be any different.

But, they didn't have radar and tropical storm forecasts in 1864.

In the 1800s, Atlantic hurricanes were only recorded if there was landfall in a populated area or if there was ship damage to report when one was encountered at sea. In my efforts to check out hurricane activity I found a source that uncovered five tropical storms in 1864, and one of them caught the Saxonia while at sea.

By the time a typical tropical storm gets to the northern sea lanes where ships like Saxonia sailed, it is probable that they would no longer be rated as a hurricane.  But, they still could cause significant damage.  

Image from: José Fernández-Partagás and Henry F. Diaz (1995a). A Reconstruction of Historical Tropical Cyclone Frequency in the Atlantic from Documentary and other Historical Sources 1851-1880 Part 1: 1851-1870. Boulder, Colorado: Climate Diagnostics Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved Mar 31, 2023.

The fifth recorded storm of the year was noted to be active from October 22 to October 24 and would have gone right into the path of the Saxonia, probably catching up to her as she steamed eastward.  The ship was damaged in the storm and limped into Southampton on December 10 and the Prussian Closed Mail bags were then taken across the English Channel by a channel steamer and to Ostende before getting to Aachen.

New York Times, Nov 26, 1864, p. 2

The passengers and mail bound for Hamburg were transferred to the Bavaria, another Hamburg-America Line steamship, arriving at Hamburg on November 11.  It is interesting to note that the Saxonia was pushed off of her route and was fairly close to Greenland according to the New York Times report.

And now you know how a 12 day voyage ended up taking 26 days to complete.  In turn, it explains how a trip that might normally take nineteen days took a full month instead.

Thanks for joining me.  Have a great remainder of the weekend and a fine week.