Cruising Along - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to Postal History Sunday.  This week we're going to spend some time on a couple of the popular cruise ships of the 1930s.

Take a moment to make yourself comfortable.  Put those troubles away and get out the deck shoes.  If you have trouble with sea sickness, take some dimenhydrinate.  Maybe we will all learn something new while I share something I enjoy!

Receiving Mail on the S.S. Rex

Today's story starts with an envelope sent from the United States in 1935 to a couple of passengers on the Italian luxury liner named Rex. 

At first glance, this letter is simply a single-weight, surface letter from Rochester, New York in the United States to Naples (Napoli), Italy.  The rate was five cents for the first ounce (20 grams) in weight and this rate was in effect from Oct 1, 1907 until Oct 31 1953 - quite a long time for a postage rate to be effective without an increase.

At the time this letter was mailed (July 30, 1935), there were options to use the new air mail service for part of the journey to Italy at a higher postage cost, but there was not yet air service to cross the Atlantic Ocean.  But, since there were air mail options, it is important for a postal historian to note that this was sent by "surface mail" - as in, it stayed on the surface of the earth, whether it was land or water.

There is a postal arrival marking for Napoli (Naples), for August 11, on the back of this envelope, but our eyes are drawn to the bold purple marking on the front of the cover.  This is not a postal marking, instead, it was applied by the Tourism Office (Ufficio Turismo) in Napoli for what was commonly known as the Italian Line of steamships (Italia Flotte Ruinite).

The names on this marking might be a bit confusing because it is actually a combination of names that came from the origin of the Italian Line.  In 1932, three Italian steamship companies were merged to create a single, national, steamship line.  These three consisted of Lloyd-Sabaudo (based in Turin), Cosulich STN (based in Trieste) and Navigazione Generale Italiana (NGI - based in Genoa).  So, the three companies actually make an appearance on this marking (Italia - Cosulich - Lloyd).  The marking was applied on arrival at their offices and we can assume that the letter was handled by the shipping line for their passengers from that point on .

Artwork by James A Flood

Some of the motivation for the merger came directly from the Italian government because, during the 1930s, most national powers touted a strong shipping line to show their strength.  The British had the combined Cunard - White Star Line and Germany had the HAPAG and North German Lloyd lines.  Now Italy would have a strong steamship line and with that line would come state of the art ships such as the Rex.

The Rex was one of a number of very large, speedy ships that were being developed in the 1930s, but its true distinction came with the on-board accommodations which attracted strong attention from customers in the United States seeking to visit the Mediterranean.   The ship boasted not one, but two swimming pools, a theater and a cinema among other things.  In March of 1933, a radio broadcast from the ship of Schubert's Ave Maria, sung by Rosa Ponselle was heard on both sides of the Atlantic - a first.

Map taken from the GG Archives for the Aug 21, 1935 sailing of Rex

The Rex sailed its western-bound route beginning in Genoa, Italy, and it terminated the eastern route in Naples (Italy). The terminus in the United States was the harbor in New York.  The Italians held a great deal of pride in this ship and it secured the Blue Riband of the Atlantic in August of 1933, taking it from the German ship Bremen, that had set the previous speed record for an Atlantic crossing just one month prior.

Speaking of the German Ship Bremen

Well... looky here!  Another envelope featuring the National Parks issue stamps I enjoy.  And, this one has the words "S/S Bremen" boldly written at the top.  I wonder what that could be about?

Here is a larger envelope that carried some sort of letter mail content from New York City to Lahti, Finland, in July of 1935 - just 25 days prior to the first piece of letter mail shown above.

There is 24 cents of postage on this particular item, rather than the 5 cents on the first one.  This was also sent by surface mail (no air mail), so the need to have more postage had to be for other reasons.  First, the letter was sent as a "registered letter," which cost an additional 15 cents.  Registered mail provided the customer with tracking that was intended to provide more security that the item would get safely to where it was going.  The fifteen cent registration fee to a foreign destination was effective from Dec 1, 1925 until Jan 31, 1945.

The rest of the postage is mostly accounted for if we consider that this letter was a "double-weight" letter.  It weighed more than one ounce and no more than two ounces.  The first ounce, as we saw with the first letter, cost five cents in postage.  Each additional ounce cost three cents more.  So, the postage needed was eight cents plus fifteen for a registered letter.  Apparently, this item was overpaid by one penny.

Artwork by James A Flood

So, this letter was intended to be taken on the Bremen, the same ship that had held the Blue Riband by setting an Atlantic Crossing record in July of 1933 at 27.92 knots.  From a practical standpoint, this meant this ship could complete a round trip on a two week cycle since a one way trip could be completed in less than five days.  And, in fact, the Bremen maintained a schedule of departing from New York every other Friday.  It's sister ship, the Europa, had actually held the Blue Riband pror to the Bremen.  That meant a German steamer from the HAPAG/North German Lloyd line could leave port every Friday.

It just so happened that July 5 of 1935 was a Friday.  So, it might make sense that the sender of this letter was expecting one of the fastest steamships of the time to take the letter across the Atlantic.

And, yet, we are left to wonder - why did this letter arrive in Lahti, Finland, on July 20th - fifteen days later.  Surely, it did not take ten more days to get from Bremen or Hamburg to Finland?

The answer is actually on the front of the cover.  The words "S/S Bremen" have been crossed out.  This could be because the letter was received at the post office too late to be placed in the mailbag for the Bremen or perhaps, mails for Finland were not to be routed via this ship.  I suspect it was for the second reason because there was no "too late" marking applied to the letter.  But, I cannot prove either reason.

The Bremen Incident

As with the Rex, there are numerous interesting stories that surround the Bremen during her tenure as one of the finest vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean.  One particular story occurred just a few weeks after the July 5th departure that this particular letter missed.

from this ALBA article

German vessels at this time were flying the German Weimar Republic flag and the Nazi flag.  The presence of the Nazi flag was not welcomed by many and an incident on July 26, 1935, created an international incident when the Nazi flag ended up in the water.

Members of the American League Against War and Fascism were regularly protesting and handing out anti-Nazi propaganda to those who sought to board the German luxury liners.  But, after the capture of one of their own and suspected torture by the Nazis, they decided that a stronger demonstration was needed.  

It was a regular practice for departing ships to allow the public on board for a nominal cost prior to departure (ten cents in this case).  This allowed relatives and friends, the press, and, in this case, persons intent on removing a certain offensive flag, to be on board until those without tickets were told to leave with the call "all ashore that's going ashore!"

The first-person account of Bill Bailey, the individual who eventually managed to get the flag down and into the water, can be found at this location.   

"I hurdled the last sea breaker and grabbed the first rung on the short ladder leading to the bowsprit. Pandemonium was all about me as I reached the top. The Nazi symbol was just a few inches from me. I drew a deep breath. Behind me I could hear the screams of the passengers, the barking of orders in German of the captain and the blowing of police whistles as dozens of police boarded the Bremen."

The United States deflected German claims that their ship had taken injury in an American port by stating that the Nazi flag was not the official flag of Germany, but they did issue formal apologies.  They found themselves apologizing yet again when Magistrate Louis Brodsky dismissed most of the charges against the "Bremen Six."

So - if I wrote all of that just because this particular envelop had the words "S/S Bremen" written on it - what would I have done if it had actually been carried on the July 26 sailing on the Bremen?

Bonus Material

But, wait!  There's more when it comes to this particular letter!

I did a cursory look at the addessee, Mr. J.G. Sihvola, but I did not find anything.  However, I shared this cover with an online acquaintance who lives in Lahti and I immediately got confirmation that this correspondence is fairly well known by postal historians in Finland.  Score one for sharing what we enjoy!

Jorma Sihvola worked at the Finnish Legation in Washington, D.C. for over ten years, starting in the 1930s and remaining through World War II.  His correspondence to family in Lahti is typically colorfully adorned with postage stamps, suggesting the possibility that there was a collector or two in the family, and has been distributed to collectors of stamps and postal history over time.  

J.G. and Aino Sihvola (husband and wife) had a wool clothing factory in Lahti.  Their son, Jorma, had probably not been in the United States for terribly long when he sent this letter.

Just having a name to refine searches brought me to an old newspaper where the likely sender of this letter was featured as a guest for the Singer's Guild in Washington, D.C.  That's one way to add a little color to the story.

My thanks to Tapio Hakoniemi for pointing me to this article that  features numerous items from the Sihvola correspondence during World War II, including a 1944 letter that suggests Jorma Sihvola had been in the US for a little over ten years. 

Looking for Examples of Higher Rate Letters

The letter to Finland is a pretty good example of a letter that was an excellent candidate to be heavier than the one ounce limit for a single weight letter.  The difficulty is that, unlike some of the early postal history I collect, there aren't many clues to confirm that an item really did require more postage. 

Above is another 1935 letter from Stratford, Connecticut, to England.  Twenty cents of postage are applied to the envelope.  The letter is not registered.  There are no markings to tell me it went via air mail.  And, the valid postal rates we might consider for surface mail are:

• 5 cents for a letter up to one ounce
• 8 cents for 1 to 2 ounces
• 11 cents for 2 to 3 ounces
• and from there it would be 14 cents, 17 cents and 20 cents.

Do I believe this letter held over five ounces of material?  The short answer is "no."  It is not at all uncommon to find letters that were overpaid simply because the recipient was a stamp collector... or maybe the sender was the stamp collector and they hoped to see the envelope again in the future.

On the other hand, something like this letter below feels much more likely to be an actual payment of the 8 cent rate for a letter over one ounce in weight.

Is it still likely a collector was involved?  Yes, I think so.  But, I also believe it more likely that it paid a proper 8 cent rate.   You might notice that this item was sent from one person to a relative that must have been traveling in Europe at this time in 1934.  Sure, they could probably expect the envelope to come back to them if they were a collector, so why not use interesting stamps?  But, why not also put some extra content in the envelope as well?

And then, there are items like this one.  There is ten cents worth of postage on here, which probably means the individual who sent it thought the rate was five cents per ounce of weight, so they overpaid by two cents.  

Can I verify this information?  

Once again, I cannot prove any of my assertions, but there are signs that might support my guesses.  If a person were going to send a letter that was solely with the intent of sending some stamps through the mail, they typically took the time to put things much more neatly on the envelope (such as the first in this series).  And, the postmarks seem to indicate that the collector wasn't standing over the clerk asking for light cancellations so the stamps would be "collectible."

And then there is this larger envelope.  It could clearly handle enough contents to warrant 17 cents in postage to go along with the 15 cent registration fee.   And, a business address makes it likely that business correspondence of some sort was included.  Is it still possible that the sender or recipient collected stamps?  Sure!  That, in itself, may be the reason this particular item still survives today!

Travel by Air

Everything up to this point has focused on letter mail that was classified as "surface letter mail."  But, air mail was beginning to make its presence known in the 1930s, so it shouldn't be surprising that I might show an example of that mode of conveyance here.

Here is a letter that actually used the air service in the United States, crossed the Atlantic on a steamship, and then used air mail in Europe to get to Athens, Greece in 1935.  The cover itself gives me multiple confirmations that my reading of its travel is correct.  A blue label (Par Avion / By Air Mail) states that air mail is to be used.  Red and blue parallelograms around the edge also indicated to the post office that air services were desired.

We also have this docket at the bottom of the envelope that may have been a directive to simply confirm what the postage was for.  It is also possible this text was added AFTER the letter had gone through the postal services by a collector.  I have no sure way of telling, but air mail was new enough that some direction in the form of a docket might have been useful.

The postage costs for air mail went through a number of changes in the early years and some of the calculations could get a bit complex.  Happily, this one is not so difficult.  We can start with the fifteen cent fee for a registered letter.  That leaves us with 11 cents for the letter mail postage.

The US required 8 cents in postage for each ounce in weight (Nov 23, 1934 - Jun 20, 1938), which included postage for the air carriage to the Atlantic port city as well as the Atlantic crossing on a steamship to England.  An additional 3 cents was added for each half ounce for air carriage in Europe (Jul 1, 1932 - Apr 27, 1939).

Well, I sure am glad that one added up properly (15 + 8 +3 = 26 cents)! 

Epilogue - End of the Line

Both the Bremen and Rex reached the end of the line in the 1940s, though only one of the two was a casualty of war. Oddly enough, the Bremen succumbed to a fire set by a disgruntled employee while it was at Bremerhaven.  

"The Gestapo initially suspected that British intelligence had a hand in the destruction of the ship, but before long the investigation fell upon a 15-year-old deckhand from the Bremen, Walter Schmidt, who eventually confessed to having set the fire in revenge for a clip on the ear given him by a supervisor. Wartime justice was swift and severe. Schmidt was executed." taken from the Cruise Line History site.

The Rex, on the other hand, was laid up for the war in Trieste until the Italian Armistice on Sep 8, 1943.  At that point, the German forces seized the ship and gutted her of anything of value to them.  In September of 1944, the ship was towed out of port and anchored off the Istrian coast where it was bombed and sunk by Allied planes.

And thus ended two of the most widely lauded ocean-going vessels of the 1930s.  Both fast ships and Blue Riband winners - and neither was on the move when they met their doom.

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Thank you for joining me today!  Have a fine remainder of your day and an excellent week to come.

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.