Markings on Canadian Naval Mail of WWII
by John Burnett (EPH4)
Originally published in Linns Stamp News
Have you ever sat at a stamp dealers table looking at a box of covers and wondered what some of the markings on those envelopes mean? Often those cryptic imprints are the keys to understanding a piece of postal history.
Let's look at a couple of markings applied to Canadian sailors' mail during WWII.
The first of these are the markings that were applied to mail that passed through HMCS Avalon.
During WWII, all naval bases bore ships names, and conducted their daily routines as if they were ships, even though they were land bases.
All Canadian ships were given the designating prefix "HMCS" (His Majesties Canadian Ship), followed by the ships name. HMCS Avalon was the name of the Canadian naval base at St. Johns, Newfoundland.
Early in 1941, German submarine activity in the North Atlantic had increased to such an extent that the British Admiralty requested that the Canadian naval facility at St. Johns, Newfoundland be expanded. This expansion was necessary to support the increasing volume of convoy operations required to get critically needed supplies to the British Isles.
With the increased naval traffic of this expansion, St. Johns became an important postal hub and transfer point for military mail.
As in the United States, and Great Britain, most mail from Canadian personnel on active service was sent under free-franking privilege. Letters were censored by a senior officer and sent on their way with out postage charge.
However, any mail from a sailor that was sent air mail or registered - premium services not included in free franking rules - required that the fees for these services be prepaid before entering the Canadian mail system.
Under this rule, combined with the fact that Newfoundland was still a British Colony with its own postage stamps, letters would have to be franked with the stamps of Newfoundland.
But a big influx of Canadian sailors' letters franked with Newfoundland stamps could alert enemy agents to the buildup of the Atlantic fleet stationed at HMCS Avalon, and its growing importance as a point of origin for Atlantic convoys.
To disguise the origin of this mail for security reasons, it was decided that Canadian sailors' mail would be taken from the Fleet Main Office to the main post office in St. Johns. There a triangular General Post Office hand stamp was applied to show that the postage had been paid at HMCS Avalon FMO.
Figure 1 shows an air mail letter to Windsor, Ontario, with a "POSTAGE / PAID / G.P.O." postmark at the top right corner and a boxed "PASSED BY CENSOR" hand stamp to the left to the left of the written address.
Figure 1 - A triangular "POSTAGE/PAID/G.P.O." hand stamp on this sailor's letter shows that the addition fee for air mail service to Windsor, Ontario has been paid.
The triangular hand stamps range in size from 45 millimeters to 65 millimeters, and seven distinct versions have been identified to date. They were discontinued in 1945 when the threat to the Atlantic convoys had passed.
From the aspect of security, unless you know about the triangular hand stamps there's no way of telling where or when the cover in figure 1 originated.
Unfortunately, the flip side is that these triangular hand stamps were used only at the post office in St. Johns. Thus to the knowing eye, the triangular markings immediately identify the mail as originating at HMCS Avalon, completely defeating their intended purpose.
Also worth considering are markings from Britain's Royal navy that sometimes appear on Canadian naval mail that passed through Halifax from September 1939 and May 1941.
Some Canadian naval mail received the Royal Navy arrival marking "RECEIVED FROM/H.M.SHIPS". This marking was never intended to be used on mail received from personnel of the Royal Canadian Navy, and relatively few Canadian navy covers carry this arrival marking. Figure 2 shows a cover that bears this distinctive British naval arrival strike, lightly struck in large capital letters.
Figure 2 - Between September 1939 and May 1941, some Royal Canadian Navy mail was inadvertently mixed with Royal Navy mail and from time to time ended up with a British strike "RECEIVED FROM/H.M, SHIPS" arrival mark.
When mail from both navies arrived at the FMO in Halifax at the same time, the British marking was applied to all mail.
If it was found to be Canadian in origin, a letter handled in this way was turned over to a Canadian censor who then applied a marking with the universal Canadian censor mark "DB" and a "/N" to indicate the letter originated in the navy.
On the Figure 2 cover, the small straight line hand stamp to the left shows the practice. Although it may be some what hard to see her it reads "EXAMINED BY DB/N 85".
After the threat of the German battleship Bismarck was eliminated from the western Atlantic in May 1941, the British withdrew their fleet from Halifax and the need for the British arrival marking disappeared.
The following month, in June 1941, a purely Canadian censor and arrival mark was introduced.
Figure 3 shows such a cover, an envelope with the two line hand stamp "FROM H.M.C. SHIP / EXAMINED BY DB/N 504" (in this marking the 504 identifies the naval clerk who handled the letter, just as the "85" did on the cover in figure 2.).
Figure 3 - A two-line Canadian censor and arrival marking indicates this letter came "FROM H.M.C. SHIP".
I have said this many times, it always pays collectors to look at the covers carefully. If an envelope has some markings you don't understand and you can afford it, buy it, and then start your research. Use your collecting friends and the dealers you work with, they represent a tremendous resource and most are more than willing to share their knowledge.
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